Info

The Partner Channel Podcast

In each episode of the Partner Channel Podcast we will focus on a channel leader’s experience, wins, and challenges. We'll also dive into their vision on the future of the channel ecosystem.
RSS Feed
The Partner Channel Podcast
2024
March


2023
November
October
September
June
May
April
March
February
January


2022
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
February
January


2021
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2020
December
November
August


2017
November
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
October
September


Categories

All Episodes
Archives
Categories
Now displaying: July, 2017
Jul 31, 2017

Sue Fernand, VP of Channel Sales at Cirrus Insight joins us to discuss how smaller businesses can scale quickly and effectively with both the right channel partners and the right tools on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

 

Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Explore 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, everyone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Sue Fernand, VP of Channel Sales at Cirrus Insight. Welcome, Sue.

Sue: Thank you, Jen. Happy to be here.  

Jen: Well, I'm really glad to have you, and especially I wanted to share a little bit about your background because you've been working in a channel for about 18 years, and you've pretty much had almost every role within the channel. So, from like being strategic accounts director at Esna Technologies to different specialized director of channel roles, and I know you also serve as a strategic advisor, focused on like I.E partnerships and channel for the small business web, so you definitely know channel inside and out. We are just really, really, really glad to have you here on the show.

Sue: Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here.  

Jen: So let's dive into some questions I have for you. You know, you've got a lot of experience, not just in channel, but in tech, and we think about like rapidly growing software companies and the software industry and SaaS. Would love to hear from you where you think the software industry has the greatest opportunity, specifically when it comes to channel, and knowing that channel has been more of a traditional hardware type of go-to market strategy for many, many years.  

Sue: Yeah, that's definitely a good question, because you're right, and in my early years of being in sales and being in channel sales, it was. It was all hardware. You know, in the OEM space a little bit, as well as, you know, just being an additional product in like a telecom vendor's portfolio. And then SaaS is a little bit different.  

I think the partnership story and channel story, you know, changes a little bit, but I think the greatest opportunity is really for growth, right? I mean a lot of the, like you mentioned, small startups, you know, they don't have the scale out the gate. So trying to get the word out on your own about what your product does or getting in front of, you know, customers that would be a good fit, it's oftentimes challenging, and you can spend a lot of money doing events and, you know, you might blow through any sort of VC, let's say, that you have. But you can get a really strong partner ecosystem that knows your product, sees the value in it, sees the value for their clients, I think that's a really great way to scale.  

I mean, again, a lot of these companies that you would sign up to be a partner, they have clients already and it's, you know, super...I think it's a great place to start, and that's one of the things I always do when I bring on a new partner. It's like, "Let's get some webinars or events or things like that set up with your existing clients. Let's get in front of those clients." I think it's always easier for customers to sell to their existing customers, right? So it's a really great way to kick off the relationship and it's a great way to have some initial wins.  

I think, you know, getting success out the gate is a good way to do it. You know, even if you have to maybe spoon-feed a couple of deals to your partners, I think that that kind of creates a good environment when the relationship kicks off, instead of spending a ton of time training and creating awareness and creating, you know, collateral, and then it's like there's no opportunities, so things just sit there. But I think, you know, being able to get in front of, you know, whatever channel you choose, get in front of their existing clients and make sure that you can kind of have some pipeline right away.

Jen: That's such a good point, and you know what it makes me thing of, it reminds me of when we recently promoted one of our BDRs to be an account exec, right? And when we did that, we didn't just kind of set him free, right? Actually our director of sales kind of worked with him and, you know, did those sort of ride-alongs and got a win under his belt, right, and really helped him see that and taste it, right, and be hungry for more.  

And it's an approach I see a lot of sales leaders taking when it comes to their direct business, but when it comes to channel, I mean, they're still just...they're salespeople. So how do you teach them how to have a win and get that win for them, help get that win for them, and then let them go and do it on their own after that? So I think it's just something I hadn't really thought of before and then you mention this, and it's like that makes perfect sense to me.  

Sue: Yeah, exactly. It kind of started out with a positive. That way, the story can kind of resonate throughout the company, and people will pay a bit more attention to, you know, your offering.

Jen: So, you know, I try to be a really good social listener and pay attention to some of the really great content that's being shared in the space. And you had shared an article that was written by one of your colleagues at Cirrus Insight. It was called "Why Small Businesses Are Struggling Without Sales Software," and I really liked that piece. We'll link to it in the show notes. So in it, the author says that only around 50% of all businesses survive 5 years or more and only about one third make it a full 10-plus years. And if you want to be a success now, it's such a key to work carefully, so it was pretty eye-opening.  

And, you know, from our perspective, you know, here over at Allbound, we 100% agree sales software, partner sales software can make a world of difference in those companies being successful. I would love to hear from you what you think a business needs, you know, for their channel to create a path that's gonna lead a business to that 10-plus year mark, given the fact that so many small businesses are, you know, struggling to survive.

Sue: Yeah, definitely, and that article was super interesting because some of the statistics in there were just crazy. You know, it said, you know, of the people that were polled, 74% of those companies were managing things manually, and only 16% even leveraged CRM, which just seems surprising in this day and age. But, you know, that's true, obviously, and you do see it. I mean, I think being in the sales and tech world, sometimes we tend to live in a bubble and we assume everybody's using all these really cool things and managing their business in the most effective manner, when, in reality, that's not the case.  

And I think small businesses, in general, sometimes try to do a lot of things manually to maybe cut some corners and save some money, or they'll like patch together a bunch of free apps, let's say, but I really think that's where you fail, right, because you're not getting any of the tracking data either, so how do you even figure out what's working or what's not working, and those types of investments, they definitely pay off. And I think when you're managing a channel, you have to have a really good system in place of how that's gonna work from beginning to end. Otherwise, it would be just a big mess because, again, it's probably gonna be, you know, one or two people managing an ecosystem of partners, so you need to have some automation. And you absolutely want to track the data, track performance, so that you really can figure out where your efforts are best served, right, which partners are bringing you the most leads. That's hugely important. Which partners are maybe bringing you the bigger size deals, so you're gonna want to put your efforts there, or which partners are just not getting it, they're just not engaging, and, you know, what can you do to get them engaged or maybe that's just not a good fit, and you move along. But I think it's really important to invest in sales or partner enablement software because there's a definite investment upfront, but it's going to pay off.  

Jen: And, you know, I think you'll agree with me when I say that successful partners and salespeople, successful salespeople, tend to be really happy. They're gonna be your happy partners. They're going to continue to drive business for your organization. And if they're unhappy, that probably means they're not making money, right? So, you know, how do you do it? How are you enabling your partners to sell more efficiently? Are you running promotional programs? Are you producing any types of materials or marketing tools? You know, love to hear a little bit about what you do to ensure that those partners are well enabled to sell.

Sue: Absolutely, yes. I kind of have three different channels within the channels that I focus on. The majority of the channels that I'm focusing on now with my current role at Cirrus are Salesforce consulting partners. So they're actually referral partners. They're not actually selling our licensing, but, you know, they are involved with their Salesforce deployments, all of their clients, our Salesforce users, so it's really, really important for them to know about what our product does. So one of the things we do for them, and I think it's a really smart move, is give them the software to use in-house. So they're using it, and it's a great app. They love it and they know that it's going to help increase Salesforce adoption, so it makes natural sense to recommend it.  

Then, obviously, we also pay referral fees and we launch, you know, different types of promotions from time to time, you know, that will offer the ability to maybe win a trip or get a gift card, or something like that. But constant engagement and having a really easy way for them to get to that content too. Like, we've got a landing page with resources, so we've kept up-to-date, but it's got all of our marketing materials, tape studies, tutorials, everything, you know, is right there so that they're not having to, you know, go all over the place to kind of figure out what they need.  

As well as we've done what we call micro-sites, so when someone signs up to be a partner, we'll create a custom branded page with their logo and a little description. We'll also list them as a partner on our site, but they are referring people to us. It has that really nice look. You know, we've got their logo on there, and it just, you know, shows that there's a relationship there. So I think that that's, you know, important, to make sure that you not only have a program, but make sure that it's easy and continually, you know, query the partners too, like, "Is this working for you? Is this a mutually beneficial relationship?" And if you need to make changes or you need to maybe launch something as a promo, then you can, you know, go ahead and do that just to kind of keep that engagement going.

Jen: That's a good point. And I'm wondering, have you ever created something or worked for a company where you guys put something together, whether it was a promotion or it was some, you know, content or something that you did that just fell flat, that you thought like, "Oh, this is gonna be great," and the partners just not respond to it? Has that ever happened?

Sue: Oh yeah, definitely. You come up with this great promotion, let's say, and you're like, "People are gonna be signing up left and right, and we're gonna get so many leads or so many referrals out of this," and it just doesn't take off. I think you really need to figure out what's important to their business, because, you know, their business has needs, right? And I think for us, like with our consulting partners, their business is services, they're implementing, so that's what's hugely important to them.  

Retail partners, they're selling something else, and we're a bolted-on attachment, so that's a little bit different because they're making potentially a little bit more money off of it. So I think you almost have to continually, before you launch a promotion, really understand what's gonna drive them. It's gotta help their business, not necessarily the actual prize at the end of the day, but it's got to be something that's gonna overall effect and allow them to have more business out of the promotion that you're offering.  

Jen: I'd love to hear a really great partnership story. I'm wondering, from your experience, whether it's at Cirrus or maybe at Esna, you know, really anywhere you've worked over the course of your career, if you have just, like, one of your favorite partnership stories, whether that's like the most revenue, or a really big accomplishment, or some like amazing strategic alliance that you were able to build. Do you have any anecdotes for us?

Sue: Yeah, definitely. I think probably like the most challenging but exciting time in my career of managing in channels was when I made the switch, when I was, you know, with the previous employer, Esna. We'd kind of switched from working with like traditional telecom hardware vendors to trying, you know, working in the SaaS base. Even though we were technically still equipment, we were repositioning and attaching ourselves to SaaS products, like Google and, you know, Office 365, and other, you know, cloud based platforms. So we had to seek out a different kind of partner, and that was an exciting time, challenging time, because it was very different, and a much, much different approach, but it allowed me to really get involved in a lot of the early on enterprise companies, you know, moving to the cloud.  

One of the deals I worked on with one of our partners was with LinkedIn, and that was a super exciting opportunity, super exciting deal. We were very critical in that decision of moving that entire company over to Google. I know they've now been acquired by Microsoft, but it was a very exciting deal, and it really solidified the relationship with that partner, because, you know, it's pretty obvious without our piece of it, maybe that deal would not have gone down, and we really worked very strategically together on it, so that when it came through, it was very, very exciting. So it was a real success and a win, and I think it left a better engagement for both parties, because that was so much investment on both ends and it was a very long process, but it was definitely a big accomplishment.

Jen: I think, you know, recruiting the right partners is so important, and it's something that we've talked about a great deal on this podcast or other content that we created at Allbound about, you know, who you decide to partner with and build those alliances with. And, you know, ideally, it's all of your partnerships all result in these amazingly successful relationships, you know, like the one you shared. You know, but realistically there are partnerships that fall flat, you know, that don't quite get to where we had hoped they want to. And then there are some that we consider like those diamonds in the rough, right, where you didn't know how amazing it was gonna be, and then it just blossomed into a really great partnership. Do you have an effective recruiting tool or a strategy that you've used to really help gain meaningful partnerships?

Sue: Yeah, definitely, and that's hugely important, because I think, you know, there is the challenge of knowing who the people are, the players, and their respective base that you want to get into. And I think sometimes we all want to go right to top, right? We want the biggest ones, like, you know, in the Salesforce ecosystem that would be like the Accentures. You know, we want to go right to the top. And I think that for my purposes, what I found is going right to the top isn't always the best way. Yes, they're very, very big companies, and they have lots of clients, but it's very, very hard to get mind share in those large organizations, because, you know, there may be potentially even a lot of red tape to even get that partnership going, and then once you're there, you know, it's really hard to get mind share.  

So I think kind of going for, you know, more of a smaller business, but maybe if you're looking for particular verticals, a business that focuses entirely on that vertical, that makes sense, or more of a boutique type, you know, partner, and a lot of times can be that diamond in the rough, right? Like, maybe it's only a two- or three-person operation, but they've got this reputation, where they're just bringing you these really big deals.  

I really like to, you know, take a look at people's websites quite honestly and see what kind of work they've done, what kind of content they're putting up. I like to see people that are kind of thought leaders, because then I know that they're gonna get the ROI and the story that we're gonna bring to the client. So I like to do a little bit of investigation, not just knowing, "Hey, this is a big partner, this is a successful partner," but let's see what kinds of clients they have, what's on their website, what's on their blog, what are they putting out there, what's important to them. So certainly bringing social into the mix is a lot about how I do the recruitment or seeking out additional partners.

Jen: Well, I think that's really smart because I've seen culture make or break a partnership, right? So you can have two organizations. You might be both targeting a similar, you know, that same ideal customer profile or you might be focusing on the same buyer percentage. But culturally, if you're extremely different in your approach, that could definitely impede the success of that partnership. So, I mean, I think that's really, really wise, but there's not always a clear-cut way of figuring that out, right? That takes time. Like you said, going onto someone's website, consuming some of the content that they're creating, looking at what they're posting on social media. I mean, do you have a team that helps you with that, or are you kind of doing that on your own? How do you scale that kind of...yeah.

Sue: At Cirrus, we're small, we're a startup, but yeah, it's kind of on me. But in the past, gosh, I mean I remember back in the early days of my career, you know, going and getting like the phone books and going through and finding like all the interconnect companies in a particular area, you didn't have, you know, as many online resources, so you had to go a little bit, you know, more old school on that. But I think that, in general, you're right, the culture thing is super important, and you also need to understand the rules of engagement, too. That's big as well.  

You know, some partnerships will want you to be very hands off. You know, they'll want you to entirely enable their teams, but they don't want you talking to their customers. They want to own the deal and they're just gonna kind of come to you, you know, to order it, let's say, or if they have technical questions. Where other partners are gonna really want you kind of side by side in the deal, especially the larger strategic ones. So I guess knowing, you know, what the rules of engagement are and how much, you know, visibility you're gonna want into their pipeline, let's say, you know, these are all things that you kind of need to find out when you identify what types of partners you're looking for.  

Jen: Oh yeah, I agree 100%, and it's like it's not a one size fits all, right? So you have to adjust that communication.

Sue: Yeah, definitely not, definitely not. And I've even worked in OEM relationships too, where you can't even...it's not even something that you're publically saying that it's your product, even though it is your product. So that's a whole other different partnership, where it is, really, truly hands off, and you're just kind of managing, you know, the actual relationship between the two companies, but there's not gonna be any sort of a forward facing discussion with the client.  

In my experience, I prefer it when it's more of a, you know, collaborative approach. I think it's more successful, and maybe that's just the types of products that I've sold, but I think no one can tell the story better than you can. You can definitely enable your partners, and they can tell that story, but when it comes to a really large strategic deal, I think having, you know, both people there, them selling their company and their services, and you coming in as, you know, supporting them as the expert on your technologies. For me, that's been the recipe for success.  

Jen: Before I let you go, I was just thinking, Cirrus Insight's a younger company, like you said. You've got this partner play. Maybe you can kind of take a step back and share a little bit about the company, you know, so all the listeners have an idea of like, okay, who is Cirrus Insight, right? And then also, you know, love to know when the organization decided to make that go-to market, to make that partner play and have a go-to market strategy around channel partners. Was it right out of the gate? Did it come later? Can you just shed a little bit of light on how you did that? Because I know we have a lot of listeners who are in similar situations or maybe even like a year or two behind where you are, I think it would be great to hear your story.

Sue: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I mean, I joined them almost...so it'll be two years next month. So when I came onboard, they already did have, you know, partners. I think out the gate, they focused on the partner model right away, because they knew that was gonna be the way to scale, and Salesforce partners were the way to go because they owned the relationship, and building a name and a brand in that ecosystem, that's where you had to go.  

In terms of, you know, the company and the history, it's kind of a funny story actually. I was one of the first users of Cirrus Insight when I was at Esna, so I actually found the product. We were a Gmail shop. We used Salesforce and, you know, quite honestly we were struggling with our adoption, and I found it, and I used it, and I was a huge fan. I have posted one of the first reviews on the app exchange, so I knew about them for quite some time and was a big fan.  

So when I was looking into new opportunities, it made sense for me to reach out to other products that I loved and used and I knew made my life easier because I think, you know, that adds a lot of credit and validity to your story when you can say, like, "Hey, I've been there, I've seen the transformation, and I use this," or it's not like you're just selling a product, so to speak, if you have a little bit of history on it.  

But yeah, they've been partner focused before my time. I know that's how they grew the company. So when I came in, there were already some established partners, and now I've just taken that process and just grown it even further and brought in some additional relationships with OEM Salesforce partners and building up a little bit more on the resale side and getting a better handle on tracking, the referral partners that we have and just having a point person that's just engaging with them on a regular basis.  

I think, in general, with any channel, it's just about enablement and engagement. And, again, the thing that we were talking about earlier, having a system in place that allows you to do that, not manually, but having something in place that allows you to use some software so that you can have the data that you need, and be able to track that, and track the metrics on it, and figure out what's working and what's not working. Otherwise, I don't think, you know, it's going to be a successful channel if you don't do it right.

Jen: Absolutely. It's like, you know, if you were a DemandGen marketer and you never paid attention to what marketing efforts produced the most number of leads, right? If you did that, you know, that would be very foolish, right? So putting the same approach, the same thing we're all doing with the direct sales and marketing efforts, putting those same processes and holding those same standards, you know, with indirect sales and indirect marketing as well. So it's a big passion point of mine for sure.  

Sue: Yes, definitely. I agree.  

Jen: So before I totally let you go, I do like to ask a couple of more personal questions so the listeners can get to know you a little bit better and maybe bond with you over some other commonalities besides just channels, because we are more than our jobs, right? So my first question for you is, what is your favorite city?

Sue: My favorite city, oh gosh, that's a good question. You know, I hate to say it, because it's so close to home, but New York City. I just always find something new and exciting to do there, and I'm pretty close to New York. I'm in Connecticut, so I get there quite often. So I've been in a lot of places in the world, but I do have to say New York City is definitely my favorite city.

Jen: Awesome. Okay, question number two, do you consider yourself an animal lover? Do you have any pets?

Sue: You know, it's funny. If you asked me this like five years ago, I would say no, but I have a dog now, and I'm like a complete convert. I was against it. My children really wanted a dog, and, of course, made all sorts of promises that they were gonna take care of the dog, and that's really not what happened. I take care of her, but I am like...I just like ride or die for that dog.  

Jen: What kind of a dog is it?

Sue: She is a long-haired Chihuahua. So she's like a little, you know, a little lap dog, but she's adorable, and I just adore her, and I didn't anticipate myself feeling this way about a dog, but I do.

Jen: I'm a very similar story, and actually he's like five-eighths Chihuahua. There's a couple other things in there. We did the whole like doggie DNA thing. So, yeah, I have a Chihuahua, and I swear I think he would be most happy if he was in a Baby Bjorn attached to me at all times. Like, if he could get inside my skin, he would be happy, right? It's so funny. They're funny dogs. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?

Sue: Mac all the way. In fact, you know, I think I used like a PC laptop like once in my life. I've been a Mac user since I was a child.

Jen: Awesome. Last question for you. Let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to?

Sue: Ooh, I would go to Italy.

Jen: Ooh. Anywhere particular in Italy or just like see it all?

Sue: I would just like to go. I would like to see it all and eat my way through Italy.  

Jen: Yeah, sounds good.

Sue: And drink wine as well.  

Jen: Sounds really good. I know I went to Italy a number of years ago, like a good, you know, like, I don't know, 14 or 15 years ago, and I think I remember it being actually cheaper to drink wine than anything else, and so that was what I did.

Sue: Nice.

Jen: But I do hope you get to Italy, even if I'm not the one who has the opportunity to send you there.

Sue: There you go, exactly.

Jen: Well, thank you. Thanks for joining me and joining us in the Allbound Podcast. If anyone wants to reach out to you, maybe they're interested in becoming a Cirrus Insight partner, maybe they kind of want to pick your brain about some of the thoughts you've shared, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Sue: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, feel free to follow me, obviously on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. But if you want to, you know, directly communicate with me, you can just e-mail me at S, as in "SAM," fernand, F-E-R-N-A-N-D, @cirrusinsight.com, and I'm happy to talk channel. And then hey, if we happen to be in the same town, have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, whatever works, I'm happy to share thoughts.

Jen: Great. I'm sure folks will appreciate that, especially considering the experience you have and what you're building over there at Cirrus. So, again, thank you, Sue, for joining us, and thanks everyone else for joining us for the podcast, and we'll catch you all next week.  

Sue: Excellent. Thank you so much, Jen.

Male: Thanks for tuning into the Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visits the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.

Jul 24, 2017

Vince Menzione, Founder of Cloud Wave Partners, join me, Jen Spencer to discuss long-term relationships with partners, compensating partners, collaborating with the competition and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

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, everyone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, and today, I am joined by Vince Menzione, who is founder of Cloud Wave Partners. Welcome, Vince.

Vince: Jen, thank you. I'm just so excited to be here. I've listened to some of your episodes. You've had some amazing guests, and just delighted and honored to be here.

Jen: We're glad to have you, as well, especially because your business experience just screams channel, and I love getting a chance to chat with people who have seen all aspects of channel sales and marketing. I mean, you were VP of Sales at General Dynamics, you were a general manager of Partner Sales Strategy at Microsoft, you host your own podcast, "The Ultimate Guide to Partnering." You're truly ingrained in the partner ecosystem. Can you share a little bit about what drew you to and what has really kept you working in the channel?

Vince: That's a really great question. You know, I think it all started, Jen, because when I started off in selling right out of college, and I had a degree in marketing and wound up in sales because that's where the big money was. I saw that the people in my organization were making most of the money in the sales organization. And so I worked with companies, in four companies, that were, kind of, underdogs in their market, and candidly, I hated cold-calling. And so, you know, being a Marketing major and realizing that I needed to create credibility for my company in my offering, I started early hosting events and inviting complimentary companies to present their solutions along with my company's solution in order to build our credibility and our brand, and that led to a lot of, sort of, ad hoc collaboration with organizations that grew over time and then formalized into relationships, alliances, channel partners, and the like. And the one company that I was with at the time, we took that company from about 6 million in sales to about a 125 million. And then I did a turn-around where I was actually asked to start the government sales business and build a channel from scratch for that business, and that was a pretty interesting time. It was right after 9/11, we were selling to the government ruggedized computers, and we had a very unique offering, but we're underpenetrated our market. And so, I leveraged the relationships that I was building. I leveraged PR, events. I even spent time on Capitol Hill trying to get our message out through local congressmen and the staffers and the like. And so, this resulted in an amazing success that led to my joining Microsoft to lead the channel strategy all up for public sector. And so, I've always believed in the philosophy of one plus one equals three or more and mutual success and collaboration and at my core, I'm a connector. So I guess partner is just really ingrained in my system.

Jen: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that philosophy, and you wrote this article. It was called "The Three P's and how every partner needs to think in the Third Wave," and those three P's were partnership, policy, and perseverance. And you talk about driving business outcomes, you talk about shareholder value and market share. I'd love if you could elaborate a little bit. It was such a great piece but elaborate, for this audience, about, you know, how does partnership really fit into what you're referencing as being the third wave, the Internet of Everything, and then we'll link to the article in the show notes also, but, you know, can you give us the Cliffs Notes version?

Vince: Sure, happy to. And that article was a direct result of seeing Steve Case speak, actually, at an event, a Microsoft event, hearing him being interviewed by my leader at the time and then also then reading his book "The Third Wave." And what really resonated for me there was just this evolution, you know, from the Internet to the app economy to the internet of things, and that there was this need that I still believe is under-appreciated around working across policymakers about just the amount of cooperation and collaboration that needs to take place between government agencies and private business. We're moving into a whole nother economy right now as you know. I mean, this disruption in the cloud is changing everything, and the Internet of Everything is all about, you know, things like smart cars, the ability to monitor for, you know, police officers to monitor things like gunshots and doing gunshot detection that ties into how a police officer responds to how municipalities deal with water and wastewater management to, you know, traffic lights, all kinds of things that were not part of the computer ecosystem in the past. And it requires this collaboration, again, between the agencies as well as just a common working knowledge on policy and things like that that those policies...some of those policies need to change or be updated to support this 21st-century environment that we live in.

I'll give you an example actually. I was thinking about this.

Jen: Yeah, that'll be great.

Vince: Yeah, so you know Uber? I mean, you know, an incredible disruptive technology, right? But Uber has, kind of, built itself on disrupting and not collaboration. And I think about this at times because, you know, you'll go into certain cities, you'll land at an airport, and you'll realize you can't get an Uber, right? Because the city has basically blocked them because they feel like it's predatory and competitive to what their cab services do and what they feed off of that, their tax revenue dollars to that. But what if Uber had gone to those agencies, to those municipalities in a spirit of cooperation rather than fighting them, and said, "Hey, you know what? We can collaborate more effectively together. Why not have it so that Uber can then communicate to the mass transit systems in those cities?" Think about things like this, I take the train to my exit or my stop, I should say, and my Uber is then waiting for me because Uber has created a bridge or a collaboration technology to that municipal transit system and knows when that train or bus or you know, other motor transportation will arrive at that stop and you know, calls an Uber and my Uber shows up for me automatically. I mean, these are the type of things that you could see happening with the closer collaboration in what a lot of people are calling smart cities or cities of the future and those kinds of technologies where municipalities and private industry come together for the greater good.

Jen: That's a great example, and it's that we really...I think that the crux of it is that we have to evolve in terms of that policy, our business practices. And far too often, I see organizations trying to kind of shove tomorrow's collaboration into today's or yesterday's practices, and it's hard. I mean, what you're suggesting is innovative and it's optimistic. It's challenging, right? This isn't something that's gonna come very easily.

Vince: It is challenging, and also, the companies don't always get it, you know? I talked about the need for not just the collaboration, the cooperation but the patience and persistence that are required, and I might have mentioned this in the article. I was reminded of this because it takes a long time...If you're going to work in a regulated industry like healthcare or government, the sale cycles might be longer, the hurdles that you have to face or overcome like, you know, regulations, like HIPAA compliance and health care, or maybe just the fact that you're selling to a government entity and you have to have the right contracting vehicles, and the sales cycle is longer, those things take longer. And I was reminded of an example from that company that I built the government practice for. We initially had a CEO running the business who didn't get that. He didn't understand the government sales cycle and how long it took to build the government practice. Often, government agencies look at you and they frowned upon companies just coming in and kinda poaching business in their market. They wanna know that you're gonna be in that business for the long haul, and they wanna see a track record of proof and success for a period of time before they'll award business to you. And so that particular CEO didn't get it. He didn't wind up staying in that role very long, but we persisted and the business took off from there. And so, again, you have to have the patience and persistence to drive forward if you wanna achieve an objective.

Jen: You had some really, you know, great experiences and successes in managing channel for Microsoft's public sector. I was really hoping you might be willing to, sort of, share, recount one of your best partnership stories with our listeners. Maybe a time you achieved a great revenue goal together, there was some big accomplishment or some strategic alliance that was able to be formed. Do you have anything for us?

Vince: You know, I have a lot of stories for you, and if we've got time, I can tell you, actually, more than one great example. I kind of paint a couple of stories for you here. But there was one particular instance where, you know, we were getting into the cloud space and competing directly against Google for email business, and this was at a time when Google was going into the cities, and they were the cool, new, you know, shiny, new object, I guess, if you will, and Microsoft was just moving...I don't even think we called it Office 365 yet. It might have just been called BPOS which was Business Productivity...That was the original name for Office 365. And we were looking for partners to help us be successful in that market and recruited a partner of Google's, one of their launch partners for the Gmail product to the Microsoft ecosystem, but I had trouble getting that partner engaged with the sellers in the public sector business because they were averse to working with anybody that worked with a competitor. And so, I really had to break down some barriers. My team had to break down some barriers to demonstrate that that partner would firewall their Google business from our Microsoft business and that they wouldn't share information between the entities so that if they were gonna work with us on an account, they would not work with a competitor and vice versa and that they would firewall any information they knew. And it took some time, but that partner wound up being very successful, being a Partner the Year, getting elevated in status. They're now what they call a National Solution Provider or NSP, and they won Partner of the Year Award in Education, and they were just spotlighted in the healthcare business for a great success that they've had in the healthcare business this past year. And so that was one example.

Jen: That's great.

Vince: I had another example too that I wanted to share, too.

Jen: Yeah, please.

Vince: I was thinking about this one, and this one was, again, in the government space, but it was a large systems integrator, whose name will, you know, go unmentioned here. But this systems integrator was an influencer in their market but very vendor-agnostic. They didn't partner with other organizations, but they became a big fan of Microsoft, and this led to...And again, this was persistent. This was like years and years of working with them, meeting with them, getting them in to engage with our teams that they really became the big fan of the technology when we released Surface, when we started moving to Azure and the cloud. And we developed this strategic alliance and started to co-develop some very cool technology around security, and it was through some of those agencies and government that we really can't talk further about, but you know who they are, and they went from being very vendor-agnostic to being raving fans and creating an alliance and strong partnership with Microsoft that took off. And I was actually reminded that when I was trying to kinda bring this partner along. I had a very senior Microsoft sales leader at the time say to me, don't waste my time with them. "They're not gonna partner with us. That's not their approach." And that person's no longer with Microsoft, but we persisted. Again, persistence, trying to drive the right outcome for the business, and you know, just having the end in mind in terms of what we need to do in order to be successful.

Jen: It's actually a really good segue. I love hearing success stories. The benefit of having channel sales and marketing professionals on this show is also to hear about some of the problems, some of the mistakes that have been made over the years, so that we can make sure, you know, we teach those and those mistakes aren't made again. Are you willing to share any mistakes or problems you've seen business leaders have to deal with when managing alliances for their business?

Vince: Yeah. That's quite a bit of what I do on "The Ultimate Guide to Partnering" is I try to uncover the pitfalls as well as the success stories. And on both sides of this equation, it comes down to not really understanding or having a common vision of what the outcome needs to be and not understanding each other's operating model. So in the case of partners that are looking to engage with companies like Microsoft, and this is true of other tech giants, is it's just not understanding, you know, the cadence of the business like when is a good time to engage, when it's not a good time because it's the end of a quarter or end of the fiscal year. It's thinking that just because you are a partner that "you're just going to get all these leads and access to customers where these big companies have lots and lots and lots of partners," and they can't just open up the doors. It would erode their customers' confidence in them if they did that, so it's understanding how to best engage with a field organization. And again, it comes back to this kind of being in it for the long haul, understanding the mutual outcomes that you're looking to drive, and being in it together. In the case of Microsoft...Again, it comes back to...I'd mentioned that one partner, particularly Google partner. Sometimes, the field sales organizations don't want to collaborate with a partner that they see as being somewhat competitive to them because they offer other offerings. And in today's world in this time of rapid transformation, you need everybody, actually, to help drive your business, and so you have to be a little bit more open to the conversation and maybe firewall the conversation so that we're specifically going after this particular outcome together, and maybe we're competitors someplace else.

Jen: I think, you know, a lot of what you touched on regarding, you know, those challenges or the way to really approach an alliance or a partnership, it's really cultural in nature. And you know, for me, I see that as this is...that's top-down, right? That's the leadership of the organization and from the CEOs level going down into the organization of making sure that there is a culture of partnership, that there's the understanding of "why," why are we doing this, learning from each other, looking at the KPI's that we're gonna be holding our team accountable to and ensuring that they are the right sort of KPI's, you know? But also, I talk to people all the time who go, "Wait a minute. I'm just a cog in this machine. I have a job to do." And so, do you have any advice you would give somebody for, you know, who really wants to build partnerships successfully, build partnerships with transparency, and the way that you're suggesting, when they've been inserted into and organization and maybe don't have the opportunity to craft that culture from the onset? 16:20

Vince: That's a really good question, and I think you're right. It comes from the top-down in the organization. And I see this way too often where sellers are very good at one specific function, and that's calling on the end customer. And in many cases, some of those best sellers, bestselling people, best sales people are the ones that are also, I'll call them control freaks for lack of a better term here, and they don't want anybody else involved with their account, and anything that's introduced into the account is an issue. I would say to those sellers or sellers that are in an organization that thinks that way is that you have to think differently, right? You have to really think about the adage of, you know...I can’t think of this term. I'm gonna come back to that one. But just the adage that I mentioned earlier about one plus one equals three or more because it really is a collaboration leads to a greater set of outcomes for you and for the customer. And it leads to raving fan customers as well as a partner that will collaborate with you and bring you into opportunities later on versus kind of having the blinders on and saying, "No, I want to control this account. I don't want the partner involved." Not being willing to kinda give up the reins or give up control of the outcome or the time frame for the outcome to happen is a reason why a lot of people are unsuccessful working in partnerships with other organizations.

Jen: Well, there’s certainly a lot of fear. I think that that control freak, sort of, nature, you know, that you're talking about comes from this fear of, "I'm not gonna be successful," or "Someone's gonna encroach on my work or what I'm doing." And I guess, it's up to those leaders to, you know, set the culture but also identify the processes, procedures, provide the tools and resources so that everyone's worst fears, whatever they are, get them all out on the table, "Okay, what are you most worried about happening? And let's make sure that those things don't happen," or "Let's just dispel this rumor, okay? This is not...That is never gonna happen. Don't worry about that." Because I think, it just comes down to trust, and people want to feel like, you know, they're being taken care of by their organization. And when you bring a partner into the mix...sometimes, if you haven't had experience working collaboratively with partners, you know, I think that could be a little bit daunting for some folks.

Vince: It is, and then it's also knowing just that this is a relationship. This is an ongoing long-term relationship. It's not transactional. Before Microsoft evolved the cloud business, there were some people at Microsoft that only engage with the partner that was transacting the Enterprise Agreement. And so, I would get the phone call around this time of year, which is the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, and that was the only time the sales person wanted to talk to the partner person. And of course, it was really...they were really ready to just jump on them because the order hadn't come through yet. Rather than building that relationship, having lunch once a month to discuss account strategy and account planning, all the things that should have happened, these people were just really in the moment for the transaction to happen. And it was just about that time of year or that time of the cycle versus having this ongoing relationship. You mentioned trust, building trust, having transparency, a mutual respect for each other's business, and business cadence and you know, set of outcomes. What's in it for me? Knowing each other's wins is so important, right, that that radio station, WIIFM, you know, What's In It For Me, that both organizations have, right? Each organization has its own business and set of outcomes that they're trying to drive against, and understanding that mutual respect is just so important to success.

Jen: There's something else I want to ask you about, and a lot of the people that we talk to, you know, here at Allbound are either, they're in one of two camps...they either are have been hired to enter an organization and literally breathe life back into the channel partner program. So in those cases, it's typically the company has some kind of a partner program that really wasn't very well architected. Maybe they kind of fell backwards into it, right? Someone comes to them, and says, "I wanna refer your business," or "Let's cut a little bit of a deal." And the beginnings of a partner program are put into place and other folks kinda jump on board, and then it becomes its own living beast, and now, someone's got to come in and wrangle it. So we talk to a lot of people that are in that kind of world, and then we talk to folks who mostly, you know, at rapidly growing SAAS companies that have gone...their go-to-market strategy has been direct, but now, they have these goals to start a channel program. They're starting from scratch, and it's just this open field, like of, you know, what do they want to build? And I'm wondering if you have any advice for either one of those people. I don't know if that advice would be different or if it would all be rooted in the same. If you can kind of like think back to sort of the beginnings of what it's like to start building something. What advice do you have to give these people who are setting out to build a successful channel partner program?

Vince: It's a really great question. I think about just how, culturally, the organization has to think differently, right? And in both of those examples, right? So we had a program, why wasn't it working, you know? Maybe it was that conversation we're just having earlier about mutual trust and respect. A lot of times, I see organizations, they wanna go fix something, and they think that one particular individual could come in as the new channel chief and just that person will create some type of magic or hocus-pocus on the situation. It's much more ingrained in the culture of the organization that tops down approach. It has to be buy-in from everyone in the company especially from the financial acumen, the chief financial officer CEO level, all the way down into the field organization. Compensation has to be structured so that sellers win when partners win. That's an important aspect. Compensation drives behavior, right? So if I were to look at a program, an existing program, I want to look at a few things. I would want to interview the partners. I'd wanna interview the sales people. I'd wanna understand where the cultural imbalance was and then design programs and readiness tools and compensation incentive models that drove the right behavior both for internal sellers as well as for partners. And so, that's how I would think about that. I think from this SaaS model, I think it's fairly similar, as well, again for companies that are moving from the Direct model, they're trying to grow through their channel. Again, they have to take a look at their current business model, their revenue streams. You know, what could be changed to drive this mutual behavior, this behavior that drives to a successful outcome ultimately for both the sellers, the partners, and for the customers?

Jen: Great, that's wonderful, wonderful advice. And I love that you mentioned compensation because it is what drives, you know, everyone. And if those compensation structures aren't aligned, that can really cause a lot of headaches with the partner program and making sure that program is successful. This has been so great chatting channel with you. Before I let you go, I do put all of our guests through a little bit of a speed round of more personal questions. Are you ready?

Vince: I'm ready for this. I've listened to a few of your episodes. I don't know what's coming my way but go for it.

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

Vince: That's a good one. My favorite city is Philadelphia.

Jen: Okay, tell me why? What do you love about Philly?

Vince: Well, we lived outside of Philadelphia for about 26 years. My kids love Philly. My daughter went to Temple University. It's a city that's on the rebound which is what I love about it, and it's become my new favorite place. Although I love Washington DC and spend a lot of time there, Philly has got this new exuberance about it, and I love the phoenix rising from the ashes. And I see Philly in much the same way. They're building new skyscrapers, Millennials are moving back in the city at a pretty high clip. It's still an affordable city and a very livable city, and they have great, great restaurants. Lot of great BYOBs, and just they're underrated in many ways but just a great little city.

Jen: And pretty much...I went to Philly once and all I did was eat when I was there.

Vince: It's a common thing to do in Philly.

Jen: Right. Okay, question number two, would you consider yourself an animal lover?

Vince: I am. I am, actually. I didn't grow up an animal lover, so that's a great question. I didn't have a dog until about 15 years ago, and we had 2 dogs up until a couple weeks ago. We'd lost...one of them just, you know, passed, and so I've learned to love dogs. And I've learned a lot about life through dogs and just giving back to them and just getting all that love and loyalty that you get from a dog.

Jen: Yeah. Sorry to hear about that loss. What kind of dogs? What breed?

Vince: Shih Tzu and Shih Tzu-Bichon blend were the two dogs we had.

Jen: Oh, yeah. Fluffy, fuzzy.

Vince: Fluffy, fuzzy. And the other reason why I didn't have dogs when I was younger, I had really bad allergies as a kid, and so they're hypoallergenic and they're just, you know...they're terrific dogs.

Jen: Yeah. Okay, next question, Mac or PC?

Vince: Well, PC.

Jen: I should've known, right?

Vince: Yeah, you know, I do...I'm a huge fan of the Surface, and I knew Panos Panay at Microsoft when he released it and just, you know, still a super fan. Although, I will tell you that I have iOS. I have an iPhone, and I do love the apps and the finished quality of the apps.

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

Vince: I'm a real beach person, so, you know, it's probably gonna be Saint Barths, but there's this other piece of me that wants to be on the coast of like Sicily right now...and eating great Italian food, so I'm gonna go with Sicily instead of Saint Barths, how's that?

Jen: Yes. Well, Sicily, right? So you can...there's water, right, and the food. You get the best of both worlds.

Vince: That's right. Beautiful blue water and great Italian cooking, so, you know...

Jen: Perfect.

Vince: Well, thanks so much for taking some time with me and with our listeners today. It was great. If anyone would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Jen: So I have become a fan of social, and in fact, just...really getting the hang of Twitter but my Twitter handle is @vincemenzione, that's V-I-N-C-E-M-E-N-Z-I-O-N-E. I can also be reached at LinkedIn and Facebook at the same handles and on Instagram, as well, and then my email address is vincemenzione, without any dots or dashes, @gmail.com.

Vince: Perfect.

Jen: Thank you, Jen. This has been a great pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Vince: Again, thank you for your time today, and thanks to everyone for listening, and we'll catch you next week with an all-new episode.

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

Jul 17, 2017

Liz Stuart, Vice President of Operations - Partner Alliances and Customer Experience at Advanced Systems Group, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss the view of the channel from the reseller side, how to be successful reseller, what it means to have a good relationship with your vendor partner and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.





Transcription

 

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 and welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer here at Allbound, and today I'm joined by Liz Stuart, who is Vice President of Operations of Partner Alliances and Customer Experience at Advanced Systems Group. And I'm really excited to have Liz on the podcast today because she is bringing us the perspective of the partner. And we've only had that one other time before with Justin Gray from LeadMD. Normally, where I'm talking to channel sales and marketing leaders, but I think this is such a great way for our audience to really step into their partner shoes. So, to start it off Liz, you've been there for about 17 years. You probably know every nook of the place. Can you tell us a little bit about Advanced Systems Group?

Liz: Sure. First, I'll say thank you for inviting me to be on your podcast. I'm a huge fan, so I'm really honored to be here today and talk about kind of what the partner experience looks like. ASG, we've been in business for 37 years. We started off as a Computer Land franchise and pretty quickly turned into a value-added reseller or solution provider. We have historically focused in the storage space, and today we're really looking at object storage, and software-defined networking, and kind of software-defined everything.

Jen: Wonderful. I wanna dig into some of your experience and some accolades actually. You were named one of CRN's 2016 Women of the Channel for your role in driving profitable growth and facilitating stronger channel alliances for ASG. Can you share a little bit about how you've grown these relationships with your vendors?

Liz: Sure. So, one of the things that we did as a company about 10 years ago, or maybe a little bit longer than that was we developed a role or a group of people that we align with our strategic partnerships. And basically, that's the vendor alliance manager, strategic alliance manager. These folks are aligned to our partners and their purpose is to have a deep understanding of who the partner is, their people, meaning their org charts, and that changes a lot, the processes, the programs, certifications that are required, and to bridge the gap between the vendor partner with our sales and engineering teams and then onto operations as well. This role is critical to our successful with our vendor ecosystem because that changes often and trust with our vendor ecosystem is so very important and that person helps keep that continuity and keep the repeatability of the consistency and the repeatability of the relationship and how we go to market.

Jen: Excellent. I want, you know, to get some partner perspective from you. You know, ASG is a reseller for a lot of companies like HP, and Oracle, VMware, Cisco, NetApp, and Hitachi. Can you share a little bit about your relationships with those vendor partners? I'd love to hear what those partners have done to help you be successful in selling their solutions and products.

Liz: Sure. So we have a mix of what I would call the industry giants. Some of the ones that you just mentioned and we also have our boutique-type partnerships or the smaller-type partnerships. And I think having a mix of those is the recipe for success. You know, from the industry giants, you're gonna have consistency in their programs and go-to-market. There won't be a lot of surprises there. They're gonna be very process-driven, and probably move a little bit slower than some of these…some of the boutique-type on partnerships. Now, on the smaller and boutique-type vendors, they're gonna bring agility and focus. They tend to move faster. They provide great service. And it's nice partnering with them because they're not gonna get processed...they're not gonna let process slow them down or getting the way of providing great service, and they tend to be a little bit more scrappy.

Jen: Great. I love that.

Liz: Yeah.

Jen: And, you know, are there any trends that you've seen? You know, thinking about those different vendors, whether they are those larger organizations or those smaller scrappy ones, any trends you're seeing some of your vendors moving towards as a whole? I mean, just in the time that you've been working in like a channel operations type of a role, what shifts have you seen these organizations making to help support you?

Liz: So, one of the things that I think we're all hearing about is, you know, the buyer journey is evolving. And I think it makes sense that the partnership journey should also evolve too. And vendor partners that we're having a lot of success with, get that. So they're looking at unconventional ways of partnering and meeting the customer, a lot of times that's us, right? Where we are, meaning they're continuously educating on solutions, and processes, and programs. It's not a one and done, right? They're not gonna show up and do a lunch and learn and not see them again till the next QBR. The ones that we're seeing a lot of success with are the ones that come to you, they set an agenda, they...we agree to mutual of our goals, we have a mutual understanding of what their KPIs are, what we need from them and what their expectations of us are. And then we can deliver to that and then they can do the same. And I think it's that transparent and open reciprocal conversation that's just going on all the time with the partners that are...that we're really successful with.

Jen: Do you have a...I'm just, you know...I'm curious about this. Do you ever have experiences with one particular vendor that you're like, "This work so well," and then do you share that with another vendor or do you try to really compartmentalize your interactions?

Liz: I think it's important to share. And yes, we do wherever we can share it and try to repeat that if we're having great success. And we ask for the same of our partners. So one of our questions I have, when I'm on boarding a new vendor, is, "What have you seen work?" Or if we're struggling with a vendor, if a vendor feels like they're struggling with us, I'll go to them and say, "What does your best partnership look like? And what does that...who is that partner or what does that partner look like? Do they have the same DNA as us," right? And one of the things that I find is, you know, vendors because you're a large solution provider, will want you to sign up with them. They expect that all of your sales and engineering teams are gonna sign up to sell their solutions, and they're disappointed when they don't. And I think a lot of times it's because the homework hasn't been done to make sure that there's a good match between us as a solution provider and what their...the vendor solution is. And a lot of times that is...that's where the relationships tend to go sideways or not necessarily bloom the way the vendor expected them to bloom.

Jen: Oh, that makes perfect sense. There's an article that you wrote that was called "Tips for Building a Mentor-Mentee Relationship." And it digs into some best practices for really getting the most out of those relationships, and it spoke to me because you wrote it with the intended audience of women in technology, and which is something that's a passion of mine. I'm, you know, on the board of Girls in Tech Phoenix group here in Phoenix, Arizona, but when I was reading it, I really believed that your tips can be applied to partnerships as well. And, you know, from the view of the partner, how can your tips for working with a mentor, how do you think those can translate to working with the vendor?

Liz: So, when you're working with a mentor or a mentee basically you're building a relationship that's based on trust and mutual respect. And I think that's very, very important when you're building relationship with a vendor partner, building that trust, building that mutual respect. And that usually comes when you spend time getting to know each other, right? So the tips, I think, are being respectful of each other's time. So when you do meet with each other, you have an agenda for your meeting, you set goals, and you assign ownership to each other, right? So the vendor will have some goals that they want us to meet. They'll assign it to specific people. Vice versa, we'll have some goals that we want the vendor to meet, and we'll make sure that there's follow-through there.

And the biggest thing is the follow-through. I mean, one of the things that I tend to see is, you know, a vendor comes in, say, "Here's what we need to do for the next quarter," and then you just don't hear that much from the vendor until the next quarter. So, I really strongly believe in having a cadence and the vendors meeting us where we are, meaning, you know, being in our offices, officing in our offices. That's they're gonna get the most thing for their buck when they're highly visible to our executive leadership as well as sales and operations, and engineering. So in doing, that those are the key components of building that trust and the mutual respect. And I really just really, really believe that a great partnership is when the relationship is reciprocal.

Jen: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's so critical. And, you know, if you think when organizations build these partnerships, I don't think...you know no one sets out to do it poorly, right? Like, no one sets out going.

Liz: Right.

Jen: "I'm gonna set these goals and then I'm not gonna follow through on that." So everyone, you know, will have these, like, aspirations of what we want this to be. And you mentioned kind of having these sort of cadences. So is it best for the vendor to have sort of a prescribed sort of system that they will go...they go through? I mean, how do you hold each other accountable for that follow-through?

Liz: I think that's the best ways when there is a set prescribed system, you know. And we...every vendor is a little bit different. Whenever my vendor alliances folks are meeting with their vendors, we basically tell them, "This is what we see working. This is what works. And if that works for you, we'd love to build a cadence with you, whether that's once a week, once a month, whatever that might look like." And depending on their role at the vendor, it may or may not work, right? So it just depends on who we're working with. But, yes, I do believe having something that's repeatable and consistent is a key.

Jen: And, you know, because it's so...it's just so great having kind of your perspective on here, I'm wondering, you know, if you could give sort of a piece of advice to someone who's trying to manage all of the information that comes in and the processes that are part of being a value-added reseller. I mean, what advice would you give that person?

Liz: I would give, the advice that I would give is to do a deep dive. There are so many ways that we can be profitable working with our vendor partners. So deep-dive into all of their programs, their financial programs, their deal reg programs, every single program that they have and understand who they are and understand your partner managers, what their KPIs are, and make sure they understand what yours are and what your goals are for the future. And make sure you can tell your company's story, because you're selling your company as much they're selling their company, and you want them to work with you as much as you wanna work with them. So, as much as they want to work with you, so, I think that it's critical to have open dialogue and be transparent in that way and make sure that your goals align with each other, and always be working on building that relationship and making it more successful. And if there are areas that fail, you know, learn from those mistakes, move on and try new things.

I mean, I think one of the things that I...one of the other things that I'm seeing a lot is trying to think outside of the box about how you partner and how you go to market with vendors or partners. You know, trying to think unconventionally and thinking about what the customers' needs are. And our customers, they're going a million miles an hour just like we are, so thinking about what are their needs, right? Do they really wanna attend another basketball game or is there something that I can provide to them where I can get in front of them, that maybe they can have their family with them because they wanna be spending time with their family? So just thinking outside of the box. If they're passionate about doing community work or volunteerism then maybe you partner with them in that way. And, man, that's...you know, what a way to build the strong partnership is by volunteering together. So, I think there are so many unique ways that you can partner with vendors and your customers for that matter, that we just have to kind of think outside of the traditional box.

Jen: You know I love that. And because what you're saying is, you really have to understand and get to know this person. I mean, it's a relationship. It's just like when you…

Liz: Exactly.

Jen: …meet a new friend or when you start dating somebody. You're going to engage in activities and do things that are going to be, you know, shared and enjoyed, you know, among that group. And so, that makes perfect sense. And so, we do kind of have to throw away some of our old playbooks of, you know, delivering over, you know, logoed, logo with polo shirts or…

Liz: Yeah.

Jen: You know, yeah, or the boxes at a basketball game like, you know, you were referencing. Is that something that the customer or that the vendor or, you know, your team actually cares about? And I think in order to do that, in order to actually execute on this advice, gosh, there's gotta be like cultural alignment, right? Like, you've gotta have...at your level, you know, you've gotta be part of an organization that's culturally open to that transparency and that collaboration. And then the vendor has to have that same kind of culture as well. And its how do you make sure that before you start engaging with a partner on that level, that you've got that culture alignment? I mean, do you have any advice for that?

Liz: That's the million-dollar question, right? And that is...that's part of what my vendor alliances team work so diligently on, right? And they spend so much time getting to know the vendor, understanding our internal data. You know, where the vendor might be a fit. It might not be a fit in one region, but it might be a great fit in another region because of their product mix or their cultural mix. And we're pretty consistent across the board, but there is some tendencies in different...there's different tendencies in different regions. So, that's part of what the vendor alliances team does is they...you know, they operate on data and they look at who the vendor is, what changes have been happening at the vendor, what changes have been happening internally, and really work hard to bridge that gap. And hopefully, the trust that our internal team has with our field sales team will help build the trust with the vendor partner so that that cultural connection happen easier, faster, better.

Jen: Excellent. Awesome. Okay, Liz, before I actually let you go, you know, you listen to the podcast, so you know what I'm gonna do right now. I'm gonna ask you some...

Liz: Yes I do.

Jen: ...random personal questions. Okay. So my first question for you is what is your favorite city?

Liz: San Francisco.

Jen: Okay. So because that's my favorite city also I'm gonna ask you why. Why do you love San Francisco?

Liz: So, I grew up in the East Bay, and I love all things Northern California, but specifically around San Francisco, there is just an energy in that city. Every time I go there it just...it feels like home, it looks like home. It's just a great city. And the food is excellent too. So, I mean, it's just...it's beautiful. It's just everything about it.

Jen: Awesome. Well, from one East Bay girl to another I agree. Agree 100%.

Liz: I love it.

Jen: Okay, second question, are you an animal lover?

Liz: Of course. I love all animals, but for pets, I love dogs that don't shed, so I have a Shih-Tzu Poodle mix and he is the best little companion for our family. He is great. And he's been with us for eight or nine years and loves kids and he's just as easy...so yeah, that definitely, I'm a dog lover.

Jen: Wonderful. Oh, what's his name?

Liz: Charger.

Jen: Charger, cute.

Liz: Yeah.

Jean: Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?

Liz: PC.

Jen: All right. And question number four. If I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to?

Liz: So, I am feeling a little nostalgic, so I'm gonna say I would go to the Azores islands. They're a group of nine volcanic islands west of the continental Portugal. And I've been to one of the islands, Terceira Island, twice. My parents are both from that island. And one of the things that I've always kinda dreamed of doing is going to all nine of those islands and immersing myself in that, in my culture, as it is my culture. So, that's one of the places I'd love to spend some time and take an extended vacation.

Jen: That sounds wonderful. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me about channel and share a little bit from a reseller's perspective. It was great. If any of any listeners wanna reach out to you personally, maybe they have more questions, you know, what's the best way for them to get hold of you?

Liz: They can email me at liz@virtual.com or I'm on LinkedIn at Liz Stuart, and it's S-T-U-A-R-T.

Jen: Wonderful. Well, thanks again for your time, and thanks everyone for tuning in. And we'll catch you next time with an all-new episode of The Allbound Podcast. Have a great day.

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

Jul 7, 2017

Zach Selch, VP of Global Sales at PharmaJet joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss partner channel goals, growing a channel, educating your partner sales reps 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 everyone, welcome to the "Allbound Podcast." I am Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Zach Selch who is the VP of Global Sales at PharmaJet. And if you don't know Zach, he's been working in sales for the last 30 or so years, and with a lot of that time spent in the channel we're gonna have a ton to talk about with him. Zach, you've just recently transitioned into your role as VP of global sales at PharmaJet, and I know you're working on building up new channels, expanding, and empowering existing channels. Before we get into all the meat we're gonna talk about today, can you share a little bit about PharmaJet and about your role in the company?

Zach: Sure. So PharmaJet is a company that was put together to develop and sell needle-free injection technology for the vaccine market. And the basic idea is that you have literally billions of people getting vaccines, and there are a lot of dangers involved with the needles. They make it a little bit less safe. There are issues with disposing of needles. There are issues of accidental sticks, those types of things. And there's also advantages with vaccine to where in the flesh, where in the layers of the skin or the muscle you deliver your vaccine.

So if you can make it easy to deliver the vaccine in the right part of the body, you can make it more effective with less training. So that's essentially what we do. And right now our focus really is in growing the international vaccine market as well as the domestic flu market.

Jen: That is very, very interesting. And I love this innovative approach to medicine. So channel comes up in this? I think there's so many different interesting applications of growing a channel. You know, what's kind of the overview of your role there? What are you setting out to achieve for PharmaJet?

Zach: This is an interesting product for a couple of reasons. When we're dealing with the international market, we're looking really at ministries of health; government. And, you know, when you're selling to a government, they're...it can be a long sales process. You don't really have a relationship, you're looking at a very, say, long investment in the issue of developing trust. And when you're dealing with a channel, you're essentially onboarding the trust and the relationship that that channel's already developed with your customers.  

So if you know who your customer's going to be...and in this case I do, it's a very specific part of the Ministry of Health of countries and you can find the right channel. So you find somebody who's actually selling to them another product today has been delivering the trust, they know that they're delivering good product and, you know, they're honest and so on and so forth. If I could get those type of channels, that accelerates my sales process, it cuts down my cost of sale because I don't have to be there 20 times. You know, I can manage the ongoing sales process through my channel. So that's the focus of what I'm doing.  

Now, domestically, I have a similar thing...or actually, you could say it's similar but almost opposite. In the United States the people who are making decisions about vaccines are much, much more localized and much smaller, and it then goes back to the cost of sale. "Can I actually get out to every clinic or every place where they're going to make...where they're going to be delivering vaccines and make a presentation, develop the relationship, build rapport and trust. Well, if I'm dealing with distributors, our channel partners that have those relationships, they're getting out there, then that is gonna make my sales process a lot easier.

Jen: The beauty of a channel. That's great.

Zach: Exactly, right.

Jen: So, actually, let's dig into that a little bit more, and I'm gonna start by going backwards. So your most recent company, AMETEK, you worked within the Rauland-Borg Division. And when you were there, you grew annual sales from less than $1 million to more than $12 million in 7 years, and you did it without adding any headcount, products, or resources, which that's pretty substantial, right? That's a big accomplishment. So you gotta tell us how were you able to grow your sales that much without adding that headcount and those resources.

Zach: Well, so when I came on board to Rauland, which was the division of AMETEK that I was part of, they'd been trying for 40 or 50 years to sell internationally without any real luck, mostly because, you know, they were doing what a lot of companies do. They were taking a regional manager from the US market who thought it might be fun to sell internationally and putting them in the role, right, but without any real experience.

And we were locked into probably the wrong model of partners, the wrong profile. And what I like to do in a new role is I always start by asking a few questions: who are we selling to, why are they buying it. And that might sound really elementary, but a lot of people don't do that, and that really is going to define your channel. And as an example with some companies...and this was the case with Rauland. We had a very difficult - not difficult - a complicated product to install and to maintain, and keeping happy customers is very important.

So the philosophy from the beginning, had been "Let's find partners who we can trust to handle this very complicated technical installation and provide good technical support. And can they sell what's sort of an afterthought?" So the first thing I did was I looked at this, I said, "Okay, we need people who can do this type of level of technical support." That's great, but you can always buy an engineer. If a distributor doesn't know how to sell, you can't teach them how to sell. But if you tell them you need this type of technical person, "If you wanna be our distributor, you have to have such and such technical person and they have to do this training," then you'd wanna hire him, and in some countries they can hire him for $15,000 or $20,000. In some countries, it might be 50, 60 or $80,000 a year, but those numbers are nowhere near the cost of getting really good sales people.  

So the first thing I did was totally revamp what the profile of distributor I wanted was. Now, one thing that I did that was interesting - and it wasn't my choice, but I'm not unhappy I did it - was we decided as a company that in order to maintain our reputation and our credibility, I wasn't going to fire any of the distributors even if I thought they weren't the right distributors.

So I inherited something like eight distributors, probably none of whom I would have chosen, and I let one of them go simply because they had nowhere near the bandwidth to cover the territory that was assigned to them, and that was the one distributor I had reason to let go. But everybody else, I really focused on turning them around and we were able to get them, on average, to increase their sales by about 400% and some of them even more than that through, you know, the next step.

So after we brought on board new distributors and identified a new paradigm or new model of distribution, I really started off with everybody saying, "Okay, now you're part of our sales organization." This isn't the situation where you are a customer where we're selling you something, you buy it and you do what you want with it. I look at channel as part of my sales organization, which means I wanna know what they're doing, I want information about the funnel, I wanna know who their sales people are, I want either myself or my regional managers to actually know and evaluate the sales people, know how much they're actually working for us.

And I started off with, like, KPIs from the beginning of saying, "We have X man hours of selling time around the world. I wanna increase that by about a hundred-fold within three years." And the idea there was that if our distributors were just not really getting out and focusing on us, the existing ones had to increase their sales hours with the product, and the new ones had to commit. And either myself or my regional managers were keeping track of this very diligently, which sometimes isn't that common.  

Some people look at the channel and they say, "Well, I'm gonna find a channel in a country and I'm gonna ask them to buy 100 pieces a year and they're gonna buy 100 pieces a year," and they'll sell them and that's all I really need to know. But what I wanted to do and the way I liked to work was really know how they're selling, how the different people are, and it goes really in-depth. I mean, we would do evaluations all of their salespeople on a regular basis for training needs. We would do a lot of sales training and we would push people to take different courses. I would send out summaries of business books that I've read and I'd say, "Okay, I believe this is a little piece that could help you out."  

On a regular basis, I would talk to distributor owners and I would say, "Look, John just isn't really the right guy. You don't have to fire him, but you have to take him off my product and replace him with somebody else." And I would do that, and about two years into the job I had a little rebellion by the existing distributors.  

Jen: Oh, really?

Zach: And I said, you know... Oh, yeah. They said... And what's funny is at this point after 10 years, they loved me and they were making a lot of money. But for the two-year mark, they all actually got together, the old distributors, the ones I inherited, they actually got together and they decided that they were gonna go to my boss and say that they didn't wanna work with me anymore. And, you know, my boss supported me on that, and then I went to them and I said, "Look, I'm gonna fire one of you. I don't know which one yet, but you don't either. And if you guys don't wanna work according to the way I say, there's a good chance you're gonna lose our line. So you'll have to decide if it's worth it, you know, because you wanna exert your independence if you wanna lose the line."  

And it was a big, you know, standoff, got a little tense, but then they all decided that they would change the way they worked, that they would cooperate. And, you know, some of them ended up making a great deal of money afterwards because they were selling more. And all I really wanted from them was to do things to help them sell more, but at the time they thought, you know, I was really intruding into their independence, right. They didn't like that I was asking them for too much information, I was pushing them too much.  

So that's really, that's the short of it, was finding the right new distributors. You know, and being my distributor, the ones I recruited, I would probably interview anywhere from 6 to 10 distributors for every territory before choosing one. We would really give them instructions in terms of how much training they had to do, how many sales hours, what type of reporting they had to do and that kind of thing.

And, you know, they always thought this was a little much, but on the other hand by asking for them for a lot, they understood how serious we were. And then we would do things with them like get them together for periodic trainings. We would do...we divided up the world into four territories, so we would get the groups of people together on a regular basis. On odd years, we would get the local groups together. So we would have a South American Sales Conference one year and then we would have a global sales conference on the second year, and that gave a lot of opportunities for the distributors to talk to each other and exchange information.  

And because I was pretty aware between myself and my RM's, of the different people's strengths and weaknesses, we could do things like say, "Okay, Turkey has the same problem that Australia's having now and they overcame it. I'm gonna have them sit together at dinner and I'm gonna, you know, throw out a little introduction and mention that problem and see if I can get them to have a conversation about it," and those type of things. And we really got different channels to support each other and share information and become very, very friendly, and also really have a feeling of belonging to a family.  

And that, I think, was very powerful, because there were expenses involved. You know, we were flying people to global sales conference every two years and we were flying to a regional sales conference every two years and we would ask them to send their people to sales training and stuff like that, but you know, by asking them for that investment we made them really buy into our system and they sold a lot. That really drove sales.  

Jen: Well, I mean, like you said, you looked at your channel partners and these distributors as an extension of your sales team, which is great, and that's exactly what everyone should do. And what I really like about, you know, your story is that you went in, you did research, you gathered data from these new partners to see what was working and then used that to coach the existing partners, because I think the situation that you were in where you had these partners that you inherited, right, that use it and go and sort of prospect and select, it's very, very similar to somebody walking in and now managing a sales team and inheriting reps. You know, this story, we could take out the word 'channel', take out the word 'distributor', we're just talking about managing expectations with the sales team.

But I think there's a lot of people that have been in your shoes or are in them now, and for some reason when we talk about people selling for us, with us, partners, most folks tend to be a little bit hesitant to be that aggressive, because it's almost like firing a volunteer, right? So people get a little anxious about it, but you have limited time and resources.

Zach: Right, and what's really interesting, I always say, is almost every case...and you could even say every case. I mean, almost every case, your distributor, if he's any good, if he or she are any good, they're richer than you are, they make a lot more money than you are, they might have more experience in exactly what they do, right. So, you know, when I try and explain this to people I say, "Yeah, I'm having a conversation with this guy and I say, you know, I really want you to do this, because you're gonna be more successful," and he says, "Zach, how did this year go? My boat's 100 feet long, how long is your boat? Don't tell me..." right? And that's the type of thing it's a very sensitive point.

You know, I had a distributor who I love now and I was able to get their sales up by almost 400%, and he was 75 when I took over at Rauland, and he was the only sales asset for his company covering a large country, and he was great. I said to him, I said, "Look, if you die, your company is worthless to me, and your family is gonna be in trouble. So I need you to start hiring sales people and training them, because you wanna be able to sell your company to leave something for your family." And he was furious with me, right? But I was able to drive him to hire professional sales people and other people and build his company, and we ended up building up by 300-400% of sales, which was good for me, and then when he wanted to retire he had something to sell. But you get that, and he was looking at me like I'm his kid. Why should I be telling him what to do?  

Jen: Right, it's great. And you know, between building these teams and...you know, you were talking before about putting partners together at the same table, getting them to learn from each other. It reminds me of...there was a blog post you wrote that was on LinkedIn, it was called "Hobbies and Selling." So for everybody, after you're done with the podcast, go to LinkedIn, connect with Zach, you can see this article. But you talk about the benefits of seeking help from sources other than your own. And in this particular piece you talk about weight lifting, how you were able to really break a plateau, a sales rep who was able to outsell his peers two to one, all by innovating, right, and listening to other people, to someone else's innovation, then using their expertise to kinda change a tactic to fill a need. I'd love to know, you know, how do you see this translate in the channel, because today, channels are not as much two-way streets anymore, they're becoming these very complex ego systems. Love to hear your thoughts on this.

Zach: So just to repeat the story, sort of, I learned when I was probably 25 or so. I had a channel and there was this guy, a salesman, who was taking notes in a very unusual way. And none of this...and his boss had sent everybody to this class to learn how to take notes, and he was the only one who adopted it. And then later on in the year I found out that he was by far the best performer in his team, right. Like, he outperformed everybody else in his team by at least two to one.  

And I really learned from that the idea of you should always be learning, you should always be honing your skills, taking yourself up, even something as small as note-taking, right. I mean, how many...we all take notes, we all say, "Well, you should ask people questions, you should gather information," right? But if you're not documenting that well, you're not doing your best job, but how many of us go out and really work at note-taking? So I took that as a really important lesson, and that was almost 25 years ago, more or less.

So what I try to do every year is, first of all, I try and read probably between 6 and 10 very specific business books every year, and they're usually on a subject, open-ended questions for instance, or you know, a certain type of way to prepare a slide deck, different things like that. And I'll read the book and, you know, I'll go to a couple of seminars or workshops every year. And what I try and do is then take that stuff and prepare it into training for my channel sales organization, and sort of I see that as part of my job. So what I'll do is I'll say, "Okay, you know, I'm gonna take this 300-page book. I'm gonna take two ideas from it, and then I'm going to set up a webinar, and I'm gonna first train my regional managers, and then I'm gonna train all of the salespeople." And now this also brings another value to the owner or manager, because if I teach them a good trick that isn't related to my product, they're gonna be able to use that selling other products too, right.  

So I'm giving them an advantage. I'm increasing my importance and my mind share with the partners, but I'm also giving them a tool that might help them sell a little bit more. And, you know, what I've heard from that is also sometimes it even drives people... You'll have sales people who say, "You know what? I sort of felt that I had everything I really needed, and then you taught me this and I thought, 'Maybe I should be reading my own 10 books a year.'" And it sort of helps convince people to get back onto the self-educating type of path, because that can be...you know, sales people really should be constantly learning, in my opinion, to develop their skills.  

Jen: Excellent. I agree. I don't think there's...I mean, think most people do agree with that completely. I wanna pull us...let's pull in, going back to the present. So we've been talking a lot about a lot of your past experience. You're at PharmaJet now, we got to understand a little bit more about what that company's doing. You're partnering with some interesting organizations like the Serum Institute, and its really innovative healthcare. Can you get into a little bit more detail about how your partner program is set up? Because I imagine there's this one layer of education marketing that's going on, there's the distributors, there's like the in-office sales that are happening. I just would love to know, you know, how are you organizing this to really maximize collaborative partnership?  

Zach: Well, so it's very interesting. We are essentially selling tools to help deliver vaccines, and vaccines are purchased in a very unusual way. And again going back to what I said before, I really like to try and think from the beginning that your sales organization should be a mirror of how people are buying your particular type of product. So internationally, the people who are buying vaccines and things that have to do with vaccines are a very limited number of people.

You have a country that might have 200 million people and the decisions for all their vaccines are being made by 1 or 2 people who are part of their central government. And so what's really important to me is to be able to find those people, give them the information they need, help them understand that they can trust us and then help move forward the sale, right? That's key to me. But I also need... You know, what's gonna happen as I go...you know, let's say I go to Bolivia and I meet with the right person and he loves the product, and then I come back or I go to another city, and then he remembers he has another question, right? He wants to know more information. Well, I don't wanna have to go there 20 times over the course of the sales process.  

Now, if I have the right channel who has a good relationship with that guy already and I can make sure that my channel handles all that ongoing questions and the issues and the back and forth along the sales process, that really takes a lot off of me that simply would make the whole sales process not cost-effective. So that's really what I'm looking for.  

So, internationally, I'm looking for a very specific, focused type of partner. And of all the products I've ever sold, this is probably the most focused type of partner that I'm looking for in that sense. Now, domestically, there's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of potential customers for my product in the United States and I need to be able to reach them. I can't afford to do it directly. So again, I need the right channels for that and it will probably involve multiple channels because if you think about who vaccinates in the United States, well, your pharmacy chains vaccinate, your doctors' offices vaccinate, your employers vaccinate, right? And those are probably going to be separate channels, so I need to find the right channels to reach those types of people.  

What's very interesting about this is people make decisions about vaccination in a very focused way, time-frame wise. It's almost like selling Christmas trees. You know, if you offer a Christmas tree for $3 in May, nobody's gonna buy it, right? No matter how fantastic the tree is and how great the deal is. People have a very specific timeline where they say, "Well, I have to figure out what I'm doing about flu shots, you know, and I'm gonna make that decision...for the 2018 flu season, I'm gonna make that decision in April of 2017." So what I really need is my channel to be talking to the customer during, you know, a 60-day period about my product, which is on one hand good, because if you say to your channel, "Look, what we really want from you is, every time you go into the customer to remind them about our product, that's asking a lot of the channel. But if you basically say to your channel partner, "Look, once a year during this six-week period, we want you to present our product," that's a very different ask from your channel.

The other thing is the starting price of this, you know, a doctor or a pharmacist can really start using this for very little money. So the cost of buy-in for the customer, for the end-user customer, is very low and the return on investment is very clear. So from a channel perspective, I think what I believe has happened with us is, in the past we've made the wrong asks from the channel partners in the United States, which has sort of slowed down our sales. But I think what we really need to be asking from them is a very, very doable, reasonable, focused sales process, you know, very, very reasonable, and the return is, in my mind, very obvious.  

So, well, that's sort of where I am. I've been getting a lot of very positive feedback from both international and domestic channels that see this as a great addition to their portfolio.  

Jen: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you've made a ton of headway in a short period of time, and I'll be anxious and eager to catch up with you a little bit later down the road and see how things are going. Maybe we can have you back for a recap of what's transpired.

Zach: Oh, that would be great.

Jen: Wonderful. Well, before we wrap this up, Zach, at the end of my podcast, I like to ask folks some more personal questions about themselves just so we can get to know you a little bit better. So if you're up for it, I've got four simple questions for you.

Zach: Sure!

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

Zach: Oh, wow. You know what? I live in Evanston, Illinois, and having traveled around a lot...like, I've done business in more than 100 countries, I've lived in 4 or 5 countries. This is a very, very comfortable place to live. So if you're asking me what's the best place to live, I'm very happy at Evanston, Illinois.

Jen: Okay. That works. Second question, do you consider yourself an animal lover?

Zach: I have a corgi, and yes. So I did not think that I would love a little furry dog, but I am very, very fond of my corgi, yes.

Jen: What is your corgi's name?

Zach: Wingate.  

Jen: Oh, nice, very nice.

Zach: Yeah, Wingate was a British World War II general, so I gave my kids a list of potential generals they could choose from and they chose Wingate.

Jen: That's hysterical. The way that I name pets in my house is authors' names. I was an English major, and so...

Zach: There you go.

Jen: Always funny hearing how people come up with their pets' names. Okay, next question, Mac or PC?

Zach: PC. I have never been a Mac fan.

Jen: All right, and last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expense paid trip. Where would it be to?

Zach: Oh, wow. Probably Cambodia. I have never been, and it's someplace my wife really wants to go, is probably Cambodia.

Jen: I like that the decision is based on where your wife would like to go. I think that's a great answer, Zach.

Zach: You gotta keep your wife happy. There you go.

Jen: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for sharing your experiences, your insights, it was a pleasure. If any listeners want to reach out to you personally just to kinda follow up, connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?  

Zach: So I would just suggest reaching out to me on my LinkedIn profile, there's contact information there. You can send me an email or a personal message through LinkedIn. Just to make sure it's clear, because I don't know how this appears on your site, my last name is Selch. That's Sierra, Echo, Lima, Charlie, Hotel, and my first name is Zach. So if you look me up on LinkedIn, you'll find me and you can reach out to me.  

Jen: Perfect, yeah. Be sure when you reach out to Zach, let him know you heard him on the podcast so he has frame of reference. That will help, and you'll wanna do that so you can also check out that article, and he's got others up there too that are great as well.

Zach: Yeah, thank you.

Jen: So thanks, Zach, go ahead.

Zach: Oh, I was just gonna say I put up a series of articles about hiring a regional manager that I'm very proud of. So that's something...you know, I'd suggest people...if they wanna read it, they're more than welcome to.  

Jen: Wonderful. I recommend that as well. So thank you again for joining us, and thanks everyone else for listening in, and we'll catch you next time with an all-new episode of the "Allbound Podcast." Have a great day.

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

1