Brian Signorelli, Director of the Global Sales Partner Program at HubSpot, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss adding value to your partners, channel best practices, identifying good partners from the start and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

You spent the last 5 years at HubSpot in various partner roles, really climbed up into the role that you’re currently in now, I think it would be great if you could share a little bit about HubSpot for people who are not very familiar with the company, and what your role is there today.

So, real simply, we’re a software company. We sell software to mostly small and midsize businesses generally up to about 100 employees; they could also be divisions of larger enterprises as well and the software that we sell helps teams generate more traffic to their website, convert that traffic into leads and ultimately convert those leads to customers and that is through our sales and marketing software platform itself. That’s Hubspot in a very very small nutshell.

I’m focused on building HubSpot’s kid of second partner program. Listeners might already know about our agency partner program, that was founded in 2008-2009 by Pete Caputa who is now the CEO of a company called Data Box, ironically their office is in the same office as HubSpot, and so I had the opportunity to learn what it takes to build a successful partner program directly under him. That was the first partner program that HubSpot built. We’ve grown that up to over $100 million in revenue, 2k partners globally and it accounts for a significant chunk of HubSpot’s overall business, I started this late in 2016, early 2017 a project to build out HubSpot’s second partner program which is tied directly to our sales products, whereas the agency partner program was originally designed around our marketing platform which is our flagship piece of software from 2006-2014 until we brought out the CRM and sale products in late 2014. So that’s what I’m focused on now

I think it’s really important that you’ve identified that the partners we’ve been working with for our marketing solution, may not be the same partners who we’re going to work with to bring our sales solutions to market. One of the frequent conversations we have on the podcast is about building our your partner personas, and really understanding the most appropriate partners to be working with to help you achieve common goals together, So this is beautiful. Since you began working on  the partner programs over at HubSpot, I’m curious about some of the biggest changes you’ve seen occur.

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Our value prop for partners has changed over time. Kind of ironically, sometimes the success of a business can mean the failure of a partner’s business, or at least the health of the overall ecosystem. Back in 2012 it was different as a marketing agency to be an inbound marketing agency. It was a novel concept. Today it’s not a novel concept. And so we have to kind of rethink exactly what was our value prop, or how were we helping partners. And so we have a significantly different value prop today than we did 5 years ago. Part of that too is a reflection of the fact that HubSpot is a multi-product world, and for the most part CEO’s and just willing to accept website traffic and leads being generated by a marketing agency hired, they’re expecting that agency to own the entire customer lifecycle, and we’ve had to adapt our own value prop to match that reality of what the market is demanding.

There was a blog post you wrote that was really great, titled “7 Things I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Sales Manager”, where you share your hindsight. What are some of the key things you have learned about scaling partner programs that you wish you knew when you first started being involved with partner programs?

So I joined at an interesting time. I kind of jumped in midstream. The agency partner program at HubSpot had already been around for 3 or 4 years. By the time that I joined so I didn't see it from the very beginning but for any business thinking about building a partner program there are some things that you should give some really serious thought to Voice break in some way shape or form you'd want to run up against different types of things will touch on some of them we've overcome some of them we haven't. If you have not have a channel sales program today give really deep consideration as to why you're building a channel in the first place. Sometimes businesses do this to enter new markets, Sometimes they do it to run the entire still sometimes to replace an entire Services Division and sometimes it's just about grabbing as much market share as you possibly can. Those are all very different things, and the primary motivator as to why you're building a channel in the first place is going to impact every single decision about building that program You're going to be moving towards so give it some serious consideration and realize that this is not something that happens overnight. This is a very long term very long time to payback type of play, this is not something that you will Start in January and finish in June. This is something you will start in January and will see results in 12 to 24 months that you're seeing significant Revenue contribution. This stuff takes a lot of time.

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There are plenty of businesses out there too that have 100% of sales through the channel and if so just stick to that because if you start double dipping, you can start to erode your program. You can alienate your entire partner base.

Another article I saw you wrote just last month was titled “How We’ve Started Building HubSpot’s Second Channel Sales Program”.  In the article you said something that really stuck with me, you said “add value to Partners first and worry about extracting value later.” I would love for you to share a bit about the Sales Partner Program you’re working on building now and what you do to add value to Partners.

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How can partners apply Inbound Sales and Inbound Marketing to grow in the channel? Can you share some of the best practices you have implemented at HubSpot?

This is going to sound silly, but the absolute best partners, are the best students first. If they’re going to partner with us, they need to understand what inbound marketing and selling is. They’re awesome students, they get certified, they take our sales training. It shows the partners’ commitment to how serious they are to working with us, and it enables to all speak the same language.

The best partners do three or four things on a really consistent basis. They create content on a regular basis. Literally the easiest way to create content is to answer the questions your prospects are asking. Every single time you write a blog post to answer those questions, it gives you another opportunity to get found.

The second is that, when these partners are starting to generate more website traffic, and generate leads. The best partners actually contact those people. We’re getting all of this data, and message etc, but we’re not calling them. Why aren’t you calling them? The good partners proactively engage.

The best partners, they understand what a marketing funnel looks like.

I’ve got one more “official” question for you. Where do you see the future of partner programs going? What are you most excited about for the upcoming decades of sales and marketing in the partner world?

 The businesses that provide a disproportionate amount of value to their partners first, and really treat them as an extension of their own team, will win and have richer, more thriving networks.

The future of partner programs is going to look much more like a B2C relationship than a B2B relationship. Partners are people, and I think that what we’re seeing, is that we are all living today in this on-demand economy. In our personal lives, the on-demand economy is right in our face. When it’s so easy to get whatever you want in your personal life, and then it’s so difficult to get what you want in your business life… there’s a disconnect.

Aaron Schmookler, Co-Founder and Trainer at The Yes Works, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss collaboration, culture, the importance of building relationships and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Jen: Welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, and today I’m joined by Aaron Schmookler, Co-Founder and Trainer at The Yes Works. Welcome, Aaron.

Aaron: Well, thank you, Jen. It's an honor to be here.

Jen: Well, I'm glad to have you. I've gotten to learn a little bit more about The Yes Works and I think that's a really good place to start. Would you mind just telling our listeners a little bit about The Yes Works?

Aaron: Sure, if I can take a page from Simon Sinek’s book, I'll tell you why we exist. A little more than three years ago, my wife called me on the phone and she said, "I'm pregnant," and my relationship changed. And certainly, my relationship with her changed. But what I'm referring to is my relationship with the rest of the world changed and that actually changed a lot more profoundly. I started looking at everything in terms of, "How will this be for my daughter and how is that going to be for my daughter?" And one of the things that struck me the hardest is the work culture that we live in.

The TGIF bumper stickers and the "I Hate Monday" mugs and the fact that when you ask somebody how they're doing, a very common answer is, "I'll be better in an hour and a half when I get off work." It became immediately intolerable to me that we live in this culture where my daughter is more likely to find affinity with people when she enters the workforce by hating work, rather than in taking pride in the work that she does and the honor that it is to make a contribution.

So I set about to try to figure out, "What can I do to make a change in the entirety of work culture in our country, if not the world?" I took that tiny little ambition and started this company with a friend. Our mission is to make work good for people and to make people good for work. And more specifically, we do that by training teams to work effectively together, to communicate and collaborate like nobody's business.

Jen: Great, well, hold on. So you're saying that the rest of the world isn't as obsessed with work as I am? I mean, I absolutely love my job. I can't even imagine going into work every day and not being 100% in love with what I'm doing. So I'm glad that you're helping people get to that place because it's a great place to be.

Aaron: Yeah, it is. One of the things that I love about it is, clearly people like you and me gravitate together. So we can actually start to form the idea or the impression that everybody is like us. But in fact, the statistics say that the majority of people do not like work, hate their jobs, hate their bosses, want to quit. There are very scary statistics out there.

Jen: I'm sure. When I look at kind of how you represent yourself and your role at The Yes Works, you're a Co-Founder and Trainer. But you also refer to yourself as a Company Culture Engineer, a Team Building Improv Trainer, a Keynote Interactive Speaker. I got to ask, what exactly does a Team Building Improv Trainer do?

Aaron: Well, thanks for asking. We work with leaders to help them lighten up the interpersonal machinery in their companies. So we have a training model that's based on tools and techniques of theater improvisation. We use those tools and techniques to drill the teams that we're working with to help them build powerful communication and collaboration habits. It's not about information. I'm sure you have experiences like I do. I'm not too ashamed to admit that my wife and I occasionally raise our voices with one another. We don't do that because we know that it's a good idea, in fact, we do that despite the fact that we know that it's not a good idea.

But when we're under duress some of our worst habits come out. So we help teams to develop good habits so that even under duress, you're ready and able to do what's effective. Then we help sales teams to transform sales habitually from something you do to people to something you do in collaboration with buyers. And that also is a matter of having good interpersonal habits.

Jen: Absolutely. You mentioned something that definitely piqued my interest. You said the word “theater”, I don't know if you know this about me, but my career got started actually as a high school English and theater arts teacher. I was a theater kid growing up and played a lot of improv games over the years. So what I’d like to know is where do you see the role of an improviser’s mindset when it comes to partnership and sales and co-selling together? I’d love to know more about that.

Aaron: Sure. Well I think Asher and Liz from the Avalara said it really well in an episode that they did with you on this podcast. I don't remember exactly what they said, but they said that they really pursue and work to generate deeper relationships with their partners. They do things socially with them. They work on the relationship, it's not just about the transactions. One of the core principles of improv is the idea that it's never about the thing, it's always about the relationship. So you and I for example, right now we're making a podcast. We're talking about partnership and we're talking about business.

At the same time, and more importantly, we're building a relationship. The things that I say on your podcast in the long run, for your business, and for mine, and for our relationship, are going to be more important in terms of how they help to construct or destroy the relationship that we have together. So if I start tearing apart things that are important to you, that's going to be destructive to our relationship, and if I affirm things that are important to you that's going to build our relationship.

Jen: Right. And I guess, from the improv perspective, there's only so much preparation that you can do, right? So let’s talk more about theater. This is great. So if you're in a stage play there's a script and you follow that script. And you think about in sales there's a mentality of following a sales script, following something that's been pre-written for you to lead to success. In improv it’s much more give and take, you have to be a good listener.

You have to really collaborate with that partner that you are on stage with, or in this case, that you're working with. So I love that. I'm actually kind of upset with myself that I didn't make that connection before now, but I appreciate you shedding a light on this.

Aaron: Well, let's take it even further. Certainly, I think there are a lot of people out there who know, "Okay, it's good to know what it is that I'm going to be talking about, it's good to have a script to fall back on." I think most sales people these days know that you can't just straight up follow your script.

Jen: Right.

Aaron: But they still may have an outline laid out for them, which I think is also a really great idea. But what do you do when the prospect in front of you doesn't want to follow those steps? Are you simply going to push? Are you going to ignore the fact that they keep trying to steer the conversation in a different direction? Are you going to hear them ask for something that is against policy and just simply say, "No" and the conversation is over at that point? Or do you have the flexibility of mind to do something different, to go in the directions that they want to go? A sales guy at BP asked me once, “What do you do when a prospect hijacks the conversation in a sales call?"

For me, the question itself is an oxymoron. I can’t have the sales conversation hijacked. I'm there to serve the needs of my buyer or my prospect if I can in any way. Even if they start talking about the weather halfway through the conversation, they can't hijack the conversation. I instead would probably ask questions after that like, “We were talking about these problems that you're having with your business, tell me how the weather connects to that?" Rather than saying, “It's so cloudy, I really would like to see the sun too, but let's get back to the topic at hand, I only have 30 minutes."

If we go back to that principle that I was talking about earlier, remember it's never about the thing, it's always about the relationship. I've now done something to deteriorate the relationship. I have essentially rejected what in improvisation we call their offer. The offer that they made was, “I want to talk about the weather." Now, that doesn't mean that I'm going to talk about the weather. I'm not here to talk about the weather. I am going to validate that there is a relevant reason that the weather came up. The customer isn't always right, but the customer is always valid.

Jen: That's a good point. What you're talking about here I feel is very collaborative, and communication is collaborative. Actually, I have a quote from you about collaboration, it's just kind of something that stuck with me. You said, “When collaboration is defined by those who don't understand it everyone loses. Collaboration is an ad hoc or hodgepodge. True collaboration is systematic and effective, it creates that which no individual would have created on their own because there's more information among us than there is collected between us. And some problems are solved, some ideas are generated only when your peanut butter is mixed with my chocolate."

Maybe I really liked it because I was hungry, I don't know. But I love this picture that you've painted about what collaboration truly is. I would love to hear from you how have you seen this really put into practice when you talk about selling and working with channel partners? When there are people who are really selling on your behalf and they’re not on your payroll, they're not within your four walls, they might be across the world from you, how do you effectively collaborate with them?

Aaron: Well, I think it starts with having an open mind. The greatest insights and the greatest innovations are not always revolutionary, there are more often smaller evolutions. For example, Airbnb, which created a revolution was itself a small evolution on things that were already out there. So it starts with having an open mind, our brains are an incredible association making machine. It really is associations that create innovation, and there's a reason that the words “partnership” and “association” are almost synonyms. The idea of making connections between different ideas, and the word for making connections between different people, both is association.

So when your mind is relaxed we make associations. Archimedes solved this incredible problem of determining the gold content of the crown in the famous story where he said, “Eureka.", not while he was agonizing over the problem, though he spent time doing that. But when he finally took a break from the problem and immersed himself in the tub and the water level rose he shouted, “Eureka," and the solution to the problem of measuring the gold and the crown was in displacement. So he made this association between the water level rising in his bathtub, and the water level rising if you were to immerse a crown in a measured beaker.

So what does this have to do with partners and channels? Well, it has to do in part with how to identify partners, how to identify potential channels, and what is going to be the nature of the partnership. So I think we have ideas about who would make a good partner for our company, we make ideas about how our product relates to other products, but those ideas are most often what our executive mind was able to come up with.

The executive part of the brain, the one that agonizes over problems, is not nearly as effective at making creative associations as a much looser network called the “default mode network”, which comes alive when we play and that executive mind is distracted, the editor is distracted. For example, if you're networking among people who serve the same people that you do and you've got only your executive mind on, you're going to miss incredible associations if your mind is narrowly focused.

Jen: Let's talk about that for a second because there was a piece that you wrote where you talked about how the best networking night of your life was when you were in a large room full of business people for two hours and you left without a single substantial lead and you said it was one of the best nights, right? A lot of sales people might say, “Well, that sounds horrible." So why was that experience one of the best networking nights of your life when you left without any leads? I mean, don't we go to networking events to get leads?

Aaron: Great, okay. If you go to networking events to get leads you're doing it wrong. It's not a lead getting event, there's a reason it's called the networking event, it is an event for building your network. If you think about any network, it's not that the hub, you or me, is connected to everyone in the network. It's that there is this living, breathing, series of connections. Like this is connected to that, connected to that, connected to that, connected to that, connected to that, or I am connected to you or connected to that other person, connected to that other person. LinkedIn is, in fact, a really good example of this, it shows you whether you're a 1st connection, 2nd connection, 3rd connection or further.

It was a great night of networking for me because I tightened the weave. I went out and made a lot of connections, I connected myself to other people...none of whom were leads but that doesn't mean that the connection is any less present. I also connected people that I was meeting with to people who were already in my network, so I expanded my network and also tightened the weave. The night in question that I wrote a blog article about hasn't yet led to any business that I can trace. There was a similar networking event that I went to about a month later that I could have just as easily written about. At this similar event, I made a ton of connections for someone in my network named Rhonda, who happened to also be at that event and we were walking our separate ways.

I kept meeting people whom I knew she should meet, and so I would grab them by the elbow, gently, and say, “You've got to meet my friend Rhonda, she's doing stuff that you're going to want to know about." And I would walk them across the room and find Rhonda, and I connected her probably to 10 different people that I met that evening. So none of that is likely to come back to me, none of those people are likely leads for me, but she wrote a Facebook post that mentioned me and talked about how many people I had connected her to and somebody else responded to that and said, “That's the kind of guy I want to meet” and so I met somebody else named Trisha.

Now, Trisha is like I am, an associative thinker and a connector. We met simply through me connecting Rhonda to a lot of people and Rhonda finding it remarkable. Rhonda remarked and Trisha then wanted to meet me. Trisha has now connected me to people who are definitely going to do business with me, in fact, I've already served some of the people in Trisha's network. That is the kind of thing that happens when you're out there. So I went to a couple of networking events, and I went and gave because that's what there was for me to do that day. I'm not saying that I never get leads when I'm actively networking, I also certainly have my eyes open for that but it's not my sole purpose.

Jen: One of the things you're talking about makes me think about the way that I treat my partners. We have a partner program here at Allbound and my goal is that I want to know as much as I can about my partners. I want to know where they shine, who they can help, what's going to make things better for them, so that I can help make those connections for them, and I have to say I am somewhat selfish because I know that that's going to ultimately come back to me in some way, shape or form, right? But the idea of being this networker I think is very much aligned with building a partner ecosystem where you have a number of individuals and entities that are working together and collaborating to help solve a customer's problem ultimately, and that's why we have the hashtag #NeverSellAlone. So I definitely see that connection.

The other thing that you're talking about is very cultural. You've talked a lot about this, “Got Your Back” culture, about the six different levels of commitment with this idea of “I've got your back”. I think it's really interesting, and I think it could be applied to determining the kind of relationships that partners have and the levels of practice that even align with partner tiers. I’d love if you could explain a little bit about what those levels of supportive behavior look like in this idea of the “Got Your Back” culture.

Aaron: I've talked about six levels of the got your back mentality, and that's really not even all there are, there are more, and I won't go through all six. I will point out something that you were just talking about, trying to support and understand how to help your partners thrive is a way of having their back. To tie it into networking...there are two ways of doing it wrong. One is to go out and be a go-giver, and just give and give and give. You also have your mind narrowed to, “How can I make everybody else's lives better?" And if you don't also have your mind open to, “And what's in this for me?" you're going to miss all those opportunities and you're going to fail that way as well.

So what I hear you saying that I really applaud is that you've got your mind open for how to generate value between you. Sometimes that value is generated in the form of creating for them and sometimes it's in the realm of creating for you, and sometimes it's in the realm of creating for both of you. So that's a pretty advanced, “got your back" level of play. In the article that I think you're talking about I started with level one of “got your back” which is, “I'm not going to throw you under the bus." I think that when we get in bed with the wrong partners and the people who are really in it for themselves, when there's a problem, when there's a customer complaint, if you're in bed with the wrong partner who only operates at this level of “I won't throw you under the bus," when there's duress, maybe they will throw you under the bus and say, “That's not our fault that's Jen's fault. Jen over there at Allbound created this problem that you're having."

Level one would be really even under duress, you're not going to throw them under the bus. Level two, gets up to, “If you're in distress I'm going to help you out." Now let’s skip some levels. The really high level of play in, “got your back" that you were talking about is really knowing what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses as my partner, and as a part of my team. This isn't about transaction, this is about really aligning to support our customers.

I'm going to develop my skills, I'm going to develop the features of my product to complement yours, I'm going to find resources to eradicate the weaknesses between us and really serve our customers to the best of our ability. I’ll look for ways to fill in the gaps, I may even look for ways to bring in third partners that are going to fill in the gaps that really are outside our areas of expertise. And I've always got my mind on that question of, “How do we build value between us?" Not just for me, not just for you, but how do we build value between us in ways that really support our mission?

Jen: I think it's a really powerful message. I think many of us have experienced managers, internally, that always have your back, that will always go to bat for you, and managers that will be the first to throw you under the bus, right? And that can be extremely crippling to an organization. If you think about that mentality extended exponentially to an entire partner organization that maybe has 10, 100, 1000, sales reps and all the damage that can be done by literally throwing that partner under the bus.

I know I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it in organizations I worked in. People pass the buck and want to blame the partner, whether it's the reseller blaming the vendor, or the vendor blaming the implementor, there's a lot of accountability that's being passed around. So I think that that's an extremely powerful behavior, and if you can harness it and you can focus it in the in the right place, you can get to that higher level like you were talking about. I think it's really exceptional to think about.

Aaron: When anybody throws somebody under the bus, everybody loses. If I throw you under the bus Jen, I get a momentary sense of winning because I've dodged a bullet, but what happens if you and I are partners is the first person who loses is actually the customer. Nobody is actually addressing the customer’s problem, nobody is solving whatever it is that I threw you under the bus for. So the customer loses and you obviously lose because the customer now thinks ill of you. And in the end, I also lose because now you don't trust me, and if the customer has a brain in their head they also don't trust me because they just watched me throw you under the bus. Even if they didn't watch me throw you under the bus, they did notice that I didn't solve their problem.

I was listening to another podcast recently by a friend of mine, Jody Mayberry, who was talking about his experience at Disney. He went there with his kids and forgot to connect his day pass to his ticket or something like that. He had failed to follow directions, and that led to him having a problem getting into a certain attraction. And instead of pointing a finger at him and saying, “Okay, you did this, you're going to have to go fix it." or instead of sending him to customer service, the Disney employee that he first encountered took that problem on themselves and said, “Your problem is now my problem" and stuck with him for 10 minutes until the problem was resolved.

Compare that to the kind of customer service experience that we usually have. For example, if I were to call my CRM right now, it would drive me nuts if they did not have the proper customer service and passed me from one company to the next because some kind of software integration wasn't working properly.

We've all had experiences like that, even if it's just between departments within a single company. If the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing it's a customer service nightmare. On a rare occasion you might get somebody who says, “I'm going to stay on the phone with you, I'm going to be the shepherd of your problem. Even if I can't solve it I am going to stick with you until we find a solution." That's somebody having your back as a consumer, it's having the back of your own company by making sure consumers have a seamless experience, and it's having the back of the partners of that company so that everybody comes out smelling like roses.

Problems are inevitable. No client that any of us wants is going to expect a problem-free solution, all we want is somebody to say, “Your problem is my problem, we're going to get this solved."

Jen: Absolutely, I think you're 100% right there. Now, I have one more official question for you. A lot of people who listen to the show are building partner programs, maybe they've got small programs and they're really looking to expand and it's a strategic initiative for them within the next year. What advice would you give to leaders that are looking to grow their partner programs? I mean, we've kind of served them quite a bit of food for thought today, if they can walk away with one thing, what would you like the one thing to be?

Aaron: Well, I'll tell you a quick story, I know I can get a little long winded. I met a woman recently with a company called Big Smarty, and what they do is they take executive teams through an intensive process in a boardroom to revamp their mission, vision and values so that everything is aligned and passions are re-engaged and the company has fresh life breathed into it. I thought she'd be a fun person to meet, but while having a conversation with her we found together that there's this kind of incredible chemistry between her product and ours. If we were to go in before she begins with her work around the table, and do the kind of mind loosening stuff that we do, her work is going to be much more efficient and potentially even more powerful than it already is. Now, I didn't go into that conversation looking for a partner, I just went into that conversation looking for sparks because the person who introduced us said, “Hey, there are going to be sparks. I don't know what the connection is I just know I met you and I met her, there are going to be sparks here."

So to answer your question more explicitly, go expand and tighten the weave of your network, keep your mind open. There is a time for narrow focused deliberate purpose and there is a time for broad thinking and just allowing the loose connections in the default mode network of your mind to play and make connections that your intellectual mind, your editor, never would be able to make. It's actually hard work for me to shut off my critic, to shut off that editor, to shut off the executive mind, but there are always rewards when I do. So don't stop charging but do take breaks.

Jen: Great advice and I'll have to take that to heart. I think I'm very guilty of that editor mind so I'm going to be more conscious of that. Thank you, this has been so great. You listen to the podcast, so you know I'm going to ask you a bunch of personal questions. So I’m not going to ask you permission to do it, we're just going to get right into it, okay?

Aaron: Yeah.

Jen: So, first question I have for you is what is your favorite city?

Aaron: No question is easy for me until I actually have to go there, but I'm going to say Jerusalem.

Jen: Oh, I haven't heard that yet. Okay, so I have to ask, why?

Aaron: It is unlike any other city I have ever been in, it's got all of the modern constructions that that we're used to and it's also got this incredible antiquity. But the antiquity isn't a museum, the antiquity is still a living thriving part of the city. So, for example, there's a market in the Old City of Jerusalem that's hardly wide enough to walk down with people hawking their wares just as it would have been ages and ages ago.

Jen: Very cool. I haven't been there yet, but I hope it's someplace that I'll be able to travel to at least once in my life, that's a very interesting favorite city. My next question is are you an animal lover?

Aaron: Yes.

Jen: Do you have pets?

Aaron: Actually, I have a service dog. I'm grateful for the ways in which my life has been made easier and less painful through the service of an animal, and I've had pets my whole life so I love them all.

Jen: Wonderful. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC.

Aaron: For me, PC. I like to learn new things but my brain was trained on a PC and all my attention goes to learning new things in other areas. I'm not opposed to Macs, I've just chosen not to spend my time learning that language.

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

Aaron: My wife has been talking since I met her about how we should go to Italy together and we haven't made that happen yet, so that would probably be it.

Jen: All right. Well, I have been Italy, I haven't been to Jerusalem but I've been to Italy and it is beautiful. I don't know if I'm ever going to have all of the funds to send all my podcast guests on all of their all expenses paid trips, so in the event that I can’t do that for you, I do encourage you to take that trip. But thank you so much for sharing some of your insights with us Aaron, it was so great. A little bit of a departure from what we normally get into but I loved kind of being up in this very cerebral space with you, it was awesome.

If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way that they can get hold of you?

Aaron: There are a few ways, probably the most effective ways are LinkedIn or email. On LinkedIn I'm Aaron Schmookler, and that's S-C-H-M O-O-K-L-E-R, and I promise I'm the only one there. Or you can email me, my email is Aaron, A-A-R-O-N, aaron@theyesworks.com.

Jen: Wonderful. Well, thank you, everybody for tuning in. There were a lot of different blogs and articles I've referenced, so we'll be including those in the show notes so you'll have a quick link to access them. Thank you, again, Aaron, and to everyone else, we'll catch you next week on an all new episode of The Allbound Podcast.

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

Allison Pickens, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss customer success, aligning vendor and partner relationships and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Jen: Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I’m Jen Spencer, and today I’m joined by Allison Pickens, who is the Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight. For everybody who doesn't know Allison, she's been recognized as a top 50 sales leader. She's an Ivy League graduate. She's worked for and advised multiple SaaS companies and has been featured on a variety of podcasts, and even hosts her own. So I’m very happy to have her here with me today. Welcome, Allison.

Allison: Thanks so much for having me, Jen.

Jen: Oh, I'm so glad to have you here, and I think it would be great if we could just get started with you sharing a little bit about Gainsight and what you guys do. 

Allison: Absolutely. Gainsight is a customer success platform, which means that we help you orient all the different departments at your company around the successes of your customer in order to generate higher retention rates, higher expansion rates, and stronger new business through really strong advocacy from your customers.

Jen: Awesome, such a critical element in any SaaS organization. One of the reasons I'm most excited to have you here today is because there has been so much talk in the SaaS industry about customer success and about the intersection of customer success and channel partners. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about where you think customer success can really meet the channel in today's modern SaaS market?

Allison: The topic of aligning with your partners around the success of your customer is one of the hottest topics in the customer success industry right now, everybody is talking about it. I don't think anyone has figured it out quite yet. It's probably one of these trends that will fully emerge, I think, a few years from now. That's probably when we'll see it really widespread. But there are a number of companies that are at the forefront, pushing on their vendor relationship, and the way that they describe their vision for partnering with their channel involves a few elements. So one of them is developing, first of all, a shared sense of accountability for the outcomes of your client, which is a new thing. Expecting partners to be accountable for customer success is a new thing, so that's the first pillar. The second one is they're realizing that in order to work more effectively with their channel partners they have to have a shared 360-degree view of data on their customers. And then, from there, the third element is they want to make sure that they have a shared definition of target for those metrics. What are the KPIs that matter, and what thresholds do we expect our channel partners to achieve with their clients? Finally, the fourth one is about having shared, prescribed playbooks for each stage in the customer journey. As a vendor, what do you expect your channel partners to do at each step?

Some of the leading companies out there that are thinking about this are actually training their partners on these playbooks and ensuring that there’s strong buy in. So that's what the vision tends to look like. Again, some of the leading companies in this area are pushing on a few initiatives to try to get to that end stage. One of them involved is first defining the return on investment that your channel partners should expect from investing in customer success. For example, in the SaaS industry and increasingly in other industries, folks take it for granted that you should make your customers happy. If you're a channel partner with a razor-thin reseller margin, it may not be obvious that this is an investment that you should make.

So customer success organizations are helping them put together that ROI model to justify that investment. Secondly, vendors are thinking about, "How do we make sure that we're prioritizing which channel partners we work with to start?" Some channel partners are boutique firms that don't have a ton of resources. Others are large with a robust executive team, and sometimes they have a customer success executive on staff. As you think about profiling your partners, it's worth identifying what are those major attributes that would define a partner that would be most inclined to be successful working with you on this and piloting this customer success initiative so that eventually you can roll it out to a much larger percentage of your channel partners.

Vendors are also thinking about, "How can we develop that shared view of data on our customers? For example, how can we share the upcoming renewals that a channel partner should be focused on? How can we make sure that they're aware of the Net Promoter Score ratings that the end customers have submitted?" So actually, at Gainsight, one of our big focus areas this year when we think about our product roadmap is allowing that type of information sharing to take place.

Finally, on the KPI side, a lot of vendors are thinking about, "How can we actually encourage our partners to think about a customer health score as being a primary measure of customer outcomes that they should aim for?" And even some companies are pushing the envelope and starting to think about, "Should we have dynamic margins for paying partners that are contingent on different levels of health score?" So this is a provocative idea. I haven't seen anyone roll it out yet. I think we're going to see some major changes in these dimensions over the next couple of years.

Jen: It's very exciting. I love how Gainsight is really at the forefront of driving this message and working with these best of breed organizations who are focused on aligning those partners with customer success. You actually recently wrote a blog called "Aligning with Partners on Customer Success." and we're going to make sure we include that in the show notes here. And in it, you talk about the shared responsibility for positive customer outcomes between a partner and the vendor. For a CEO who might be listening to this podcast, or maybe a board member, or somebody who is really thinking about the overall success and health of an organization, can you share your thoughts about the value in aligning those vendor and partner relationships?

Allison: It's hugely important. For so many organizations, they can only afford to hire customer success managers for a portion of their customers, that's the reality. We'd all like to say we've got infinite budget to invest in customer success, but there are real pressures that we have from our executive team and our board. So, especially for large enterprises, we typically see them start to assign customer success managers to their largest customers or maybe the strategic ones mid-market. But often the SMB customers are covered by resellers. So if I'm thinking as a board member of one of these large companies, one of my questions might be, "How do we make sure that we drive up our retention rate in spite of not having people assigned to some segment of our customer base?” And for that reason, actually working with your channel to drive higher retention rates, higher expansion rates is a very powerful initiative. I expect that a lot of executives are going to be focused on this going forward.

One of our clients actually is a really fast-growing SaaS company, and they've grown largely through working with channel partners. They have a pretty small sales team, so their partner organization internally is very critical. They have invested heavily in partner success managers, as well as the partner account manager team, which is focused on helping these partners drive more sales and deals. So, apart from that, they're thinking,"How can we make sure that these end customers are achieving certain milestones along the customer journey?" And the partner success managers are working really closely with the channel partners on that.

Jen: Do you have any specific recommendations for the customer success professionals in these SaaS companies who are beginning to work with partners to help drive customer success, any tips, tricks, feedback you can provide for them?

Allison: Jen, that's a great question. I would say check out the blog post that I wrote together with Chris Doell from Cisco OpenDNS, we've laid out a recommended playbook for steps that you can take right now to start aligning more effectively with your channel. The key is you don't have to boil the ocean from the start. You can pick just a handful of partners that you want to pilot this new initiative with, and they can help you actually prove out your model, iterate, and ultimately roll it out to more partners. I’m a big fan generally of the agile approach to operations, and I think, especially in customer success where we're often figuring things out for the first time, it's especially important to run thoughtful experiments so you can learn very quickly and ultimately, decide on the best practice for your company.

Jen: I think that's really great advice. Being able to really test and prove something out is extremely valuable, especially when we all seem to be going a million miles a minute in all parts of our business. Looking at channel as a whole, I'm wondering if you could comment on some of the biggest challenges or maybe even mistakes that you've seen leaders make when they're growing their channel and maybe the impact that's had on customer success perhaps? Just based on your wealth of experience, what can we learn from?

Allison: I would say don't underestimate how valuable customer success can be for the channel. I mentioned earlier a lot of resellers are struggling with razor-thin margins, but the reality is that many of them are also trying to build services businesses, which tend to have much higher margins, maybe in the 30% or 40% range. So what that means is, if they can develop a customer success program where they become more embedded with their account, the likelihood that they will be able to sell more services actually increases, because given that they're really close to these accounts at this point, they'll be able to identify new opportunities where they can add value and charge for it. Additionally, of course, there's the other value prop which most vendor-based customer success teams tend to see, and you can drive up net retention by a meaningful amount. We see as vendor organizations rise in maturity from stage to stage as we track it at Gainsight, they will experience an 18% point increase in net retention. That's super powerful, and I would imagine that, especially as we start to collect data on this, we will see a similar trend in partner organizations that start to adopt customer success best practices. So I think the key is for us to educate our channel partners on the real nature of this ROI and then start to collect the data afterward.

Jen: Gosh, I can't wait to see that data. That's going to be amazing. One more question for you, and it's pretty simple. What's the most exciting thing about working in a customer success environment?

Allison: For me, the most exciting thing is seeing how many people are succeeding in their careers and achieving new levels of success because the customer success industry has taken off. There are so many people that I've met who were previously in other functions, who perhaps were customer success managers in the really early days, 5 or 10 years ago, who are all now actually in leadership roles, thriving, building large teams and building careers for other people. I think that the career momentum in this space is really powerful, and ultimately I think that's been embodied, especially lately, in the instance of customer success leaders becoming CEOs. We're actually seeing Chief Customer Officers become CEOs. I think ultimately that's such a strong mark of the importance of this function, and also a sign of the really dramatic career growth that a lot of people are experiencing. I find it really inspiring.

Jen: I agree with you as well. It's an exciting time. It's a really innovative space, and I can't wait to see what comes next. This has been so great. Before I let you go, at the end of all our podcasts I ask a couple of more personal questions just so we can get to know you a little bit better. So, I've got four more questions for you if you're ready, really quick.

Allison: Let’s do it.

Jen: All right, so first question is, what is your favorite city?

Allison: Honestly, I would say my favorite city is San Francisco. I live in San Francisco, and I really do love it. I think the open-mindedness of folks out here and the innovative spirit are unmatched, and I feel grateful to live here.

Jen: Absolutely, I agree. Question number two, are you an animal lover?

Allison: I am, I love animals.

Jen: Do you have any pets at home?

Allison: I don't, no. I travel a lot to see clients, so it's a little bit tricky to take care of a pet. But I often think about getting a dog actually. If I did get a dog, I would say it'd be a labradoodle. I just think they're adorable. They're fluffy, they're energetic, they're happy, and at some point, I would love to have one.

Jen: Oh, they are adorable. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?

Allison: Definitely Mac. I used to work in finance actually, and for that PCs at the time were actually far superior to Macs. But nowadays, now that I'm no longer in spreadsheets all day, I'm very happy to be using my MacBook Air.

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

Allison: I would really love to go to the Galapagos. I've been reading a lot about animals lately. I'm actually reading this book that's about how it's very difficult for us as humans to assess accurately the intelligence level of animals. And when you look at the research, it shows that animals are actually a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. So, over the years, as you mentioned, actually I've become a big animal lover, and I would love to go to the Galapagos, where you can see all sorts of species that you can't find anywhere else and just really appreciate them.

Jen: Oh, that sounds wonderful. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing a little bit about yourself, your insights about customer success and channel partners. It was so great having you. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally after the podcast and maybe connect with you, learn more about customer success and channel, what's the best way for them to reach you?

Allison: You can reach me at my profile on LinkedIn. Feel free to add me to your network. I accept pretty much all customer success-related invitations that I receive, so feel free to connect there.

Jen: All right, wonderful. Make sure you add that personalized invitation. Let them know that you heard Allison on the podcast, so she has a frame of reference. I think that's always helpful. But, again, thank you, Allison. Thanks, everyone else, for tuning in, and we'll catch you next week with an all-new episode.

Allison: Thanks so much, Jen.

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

Justin Gray, CEO and founder at LeadMD, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss partner relationships and breakups, trusting data, success in the channel and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Transcription

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

Jen: Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Allbound, and today I am joined by Justin Gray, who is CEO and founder of LeadMD. Welcome, Justin.

Justin: Thanks for having me.

Jen: Well, it's so good to have you, and for those of you who are listening who don't know, Justin brings a lot of expertise, I'm really excited to have him on the podcast. In addition to being the CEO and founder of LeadMD, he's also a weekly columnist at Inc., the CEO and cofounder at Six Bricks, managing partner at Gray Matter Ventures, partner at Grayson Organics, and CMO and cofounder at PaidSuite. That's a lot. You're a busy, busy man.

Justin: It's a mouthful.

Jen: Yeah. I'm sure our listeners are going to be able to gain a wealth of knowledge from you. So, Justin, tell us a little bit about these companies that you work with.

Justin: Sure, I've kind of picked different organizations up along the way almost by accident, but, really, the centerpiece organization that I'm a part of is LeadMD, a digital marketing consultancy. Out of that kind of sprung the need to educate and match great marketers with employers, and that's what Six Bricks does. I've since formed a little venture, a very little venture organization called Gray Matter Ventures that I'm using to feed organizations, including Six Bricks. Then I've got some other ventures in the payments world, and then a very unprofitable labor of love known as Grayson Organics, which is actually my family's farm that we converted into organic in 2008 and have been running small field crops ever since.

Jen: That's awesome. So, what we talk about here on the show is partner programs and partner channels. And, so being a founder, a cofounder, on the executive team of these organizations, you have a lot of experience running companies and contributing to these organizations. In your experience, when do you think the best time is to start a partner channel program?

Justin: Yeah, it's kind of like that old question of when's the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago, the second best today. Obviously it does depend on the business model. The payments business that I'm a part of operates exclusively through the channel, so we started that organization with the notion that we would be managing and maintaining a completely outsourced sales channel to sell and implement our products. So, look at the model through which you want to sell, if that's going to be totally outsourced to the channel, or if that's going to be a blend.

Have a consorted channel strategy right from the beginning and tackle really difficult questions like who's going to market on behalf of the organization, are you going to do it from a corporate level, are you going to shove that down to and empower the franchisees or channel partners to do that on their own behalf? Those are decisions that are always best made right upfront, and so I think just as with anything, developing a really strong strategy from the beginning and executing towards that consistently is what we see as a recipe for growth.

Jen: Would you mind sharing why you decided to sell exclusively through channel for that organization?

Justin: Yeah, so sales is all about trust, and that particular organization, which is PaidSuite, sells integrated payment products. So we looked at the marketplace and we could've formed our own inside sales channel and tried to penetrate the market from scratch, but, instead, we chose to actually partner with software organizations and ISOs that already had existing relationships and add our suite of products to their repertoire. So, it just really allowed us to break down those trust barriers, accelerated our speed to market, and led to a good deal of success within that business. I think, had we chosen to try to kind of brute force it and spin up our own inside sales channel, it would've been a much longer time to market. It would've been a lot more investment on education and training, and just empowering that force. So, again, it was the right decision for us based on what we wanted to accomplish in the business within our first 24 months.

Jen: Oh, it makes perfect sense, absolutely. I think what's really cool about you and your perspective is that you have that business where you are going to market through these partners, but then with LeadMD, you are a partner of many technology organizations that I know a lot of our listeners would know about. And, so you get to see both sides of it, and that, I think, brings this other layer of expertise to you that a lot of people don't have. Most people pretty much live on one side of the fence or the other.  

Justin: Right. Yeah, actually, one of our strongest verticals is channel sales. We've got organizations like Blue Cross Blue Shield, we've got a lot of med device organizations, Mobi, just organizations that are dependent upon that extra layer of support, and again that provides a lot of interesting challenges from a marketing standpoint. It presents a lot of opportunities to empower those sales channels, educate them, and, obviously, we got to keep them up-to-date on the quickly evolving world that we all live in. So, definitely a huge amount of opportunity, and then we really do see the folks that are empowering their channel partners through marketing and through education. That's a strategic advantage for our organization, absolutely.

Jen: Let's talk more about that. With all of your experience, I'm sure you've created a number of strategic alliances that have been fruitful. Maybe you've even seen some that have fell flat, whether they're partnerships that you've been a part of or that you've been supporting from an agency perspective. I'm wondering if there was any sort of recipe or repeating factor that you could recognize in a partner or in a partnership that would signal this makes sense, this is a mutually beneficial alliance.

Justin: Yeah, and that's always a really difficult prediction to have right upfront. My crystal ball is broken, so what may seem like a great partnership where everyone's aligned and we're going to go to market together and achieve this awesome amount of success is often not the case. You really need to be careful about whether this is going to be truly a value equation, as we term it, presenting equal value on both sides. And, so we've tried to get more formalized throughout the years at LeadMD as we've taken a look at the types of partners that we would potentially want to work with, the types of partnerships that have worked well in the past, and really gauge new potentials on that scale. So, we've actually kind of developed a partner evaluation framework that we leverage when we're looking at a new partner.

Having worked with over 3,000 B2B technology organizations, we have a lot of folks that want access to our customer base, but that isn't always a as I mentioned a balanced equation. We're often not getting the same amount as we're putting in there, so we've kind of tried to really hone in on what makes a successful partnership. For us, it really does come down to the fact of can we wrap services around that partner offering? Does it lead to more work, frankly, for our organization? We're a time and materials billing organization, so we need to figure out a way to build clients and provide value. And if the partner solution doesn't enable us to do so, it's a difficult partnership for us. We definitely need to be enabling our customers, and if we can't do that in the form of providing that solution and wrapping our best practices around it, it's not a good solution for us.

Jen: Right, and that's great food for thought for a lot of businesses that are creating these agency partner programs, I’m glad to have that kind of feedback to share with folks. Can you also kind of tell us when you think about the most successful partnerships that you've had, where did they come from? For people that are just starting out and just starting to build their program, is there anything we can learn from some of your most successful endeavors?

Justin: Yeah, our most successful partnership to date is obviously Marketo, and like anything successful in business, I think it comes with a healthy dose of luck. So, there is some unrepeatability around that as well, but I would say that what is a constant between all of our good relationships is we're using that solution in house. We have a relationship with them, they're aligned with our culture and we know that we align from a methodology standpoint. So, I was Marketo's 20th customer way back in 2006. I started using the platform before I was ever a partner at a payments organization, I sold my piece of that payments company, and kind of went out on my own and didn't really know what I wanted to do.

Some folks hit me up and said, "Hey, would you help us build a sales and marketing engine?" and I said, "Yeah, that sounds great, but you're going to have to implement some technologies that I know how to run. So, let's go ahead and implement salesforce.com, let's implement Marketo, and let's really get all of the text back in place to support that repeatable engine." Throughout the years, we kind of grew with Marketo and formed a really strong partnership with them to the point where they would outsource a lot of their work to us. We were participating in deal cycles with their sales reps. We were empowering them where they needed kind of that value engineering consultative approach. A lot of their sales reps just aren't marketing experts, and our folks are. So, we were willing to slot in within that sales process, provide that marketing expertise, and, of course, as a result, we were able to win business.

So, again, it was a win-win throughout that entire life cycle, and that really is why that's our flagship partnership. We've been able to repeat that with a lot of core digital marketing platforms and sales platforms that we brought on. Engagio is probably the newest member of that stable, and, again, we use the software, we see the value in it. We have the expertise in house to really ensure success within the partner orgs that we board on that platform. So, I would say that you can't discount the value of relationships. Relationships really drive everything that we do. I love the way that marketing is currently going, in kind of this quality over quantity aspect, finally. And, at the center of most of those relationships and partnerships is a really tight understanding and alignment that you just don't get when you start taking all-comers.

Jen: Well, I'm glad you mentioned this because you wrote an article fairly recently, and it was called "How to Avoid Getting Eaten Alive by Your Partner Ecosystem." I loved it. If anyone hasn't read it, I recommend when you're done listening, go check it out. It's at leadmd.com/marketplace, we'll also link to it in the show notes. In the article you say, if you want to get to the heart of how well your potential partner performs, become a client first. And, it is really great advice, and I understand from your Marketo story, even from the Engagio perspective, I understand it. Is it a hard and fast rule that you have to use that technology in order to find value? Could you see partnering with an organization if you weren't actually using that product first? Or, is that part of that evaluation criteria that you have?

Justin: I mean, it's one that we feel really strongly about. There's exceptions to every rule, obviously. I would say that there's no better way to really get an understanding of how well that partner treats its customer base, and, therefore, my customer base, than to experience that firsthand. So, we view that as something that's really important to our business. Now, we're also a sales and marketing consultancy who can use all of these products, if a product doesn't have the fit within your stack or within your go-to-market strategy, then I certainly understand that.

It is absolutely my pet peeve when we're up against a competitive deal, and we're up against an agency that doesn't use Marketo themselves. I mean, it's as simple as navigating over to their site and looking at the scripts that are contained on the site. It’s like hey, great, you're up against us and a HubSpot partner. Why is the solution that they're proposing to you not good enough for them to use? That's fundamentally part of our sales strategy. We've been using this, we know the ins and outs of it, we don't support any other marketing automation platform, so we feel strongly enough about it to make it an exclusive partner of ours as well. So, we kind of put our money where our mouth is, and, eat our own dog food, drink our own champagne, make up our own bad analogies. It's core to our business. It works for us.

Jen: Yeah, it definitely makes sense. So, back to that article. You mentioned to avoid partnerships where you stand nothing to gain.

Justin: Sounds obvious, right?.

Jen: Yeah, it's obvious. Obvious, right, but, I mean, no one goes into a partnership going, "Well, I'm not going to get anything out of this. Let's jump right in," right? So, it's possible at the start of the relationship everyone's like, "This is going to be amazing," but then as the companies maybe grow, you evolve maybe a partnership becomes one-sided. Maybe you end up doing the heavy lifting without anything in return. Do you have any advice for folks on how to handle that kind of situation? Do you break up? How do you not burn a bridge? Do you hang on hoping there might be something in the long-term that will keep this alive? What advice do you have?

Justin: Yeah, I think there's obviously a couple of facets to that. So, as I mentioned, it sounds super obvious, right, but I would say that there is kind of this aspirational partnership that exists out there. I feel like this happens a lot with big logos. Like, we know they've got a ton of customers and their customers kind of look like our customers. Thinking putting out a press release and putting this logo on our site is going to add so much credibility, but we don't take that extra step to really drill into what are we going to do together? How are we going to realize this value?

I find asking those uncomfortable questions yields the best result. So, yeah, we both operate in the same space, and we've got similar customers, but what are we going to do together, explicitly, tomorrow? Are we going to market together? Are we going to create content? Are we going to do some account planning and alignment exercises? What is success going to look like in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months? How many deals are we going to have boarded? When we board a deal, what is that process going to look like? Am I going to run the majority of the implementation? Do you want to own some as the technology provider?

So, having those really difficult conversations upfront I feel helps to avoid the very difficult conversation down the road where you've been a part of that partnership, you've had the logo on your site for two years, and there's never been anything that's precipitated from that agreement, and now you've got to go back and say, "Hey, this isn't working out." I mean, breaking up is hard to do, so I would say the more that you can really drill in, get explicit, and set up a plan right from jump street, the less you will have to go back and revisit and have those uncomfortable conversations.

So, that's first and foremost. Now, if you haven't done that or things change, conditions change, the landscape looks different, and suddenly you find yourself in that bad position, I think it's best just to use real world data there. Let's look back at the pipeline we've generated together, it's weak to nonexistent. The types of customers that we've boarded maybe are no longer customers, or maybe we weren't able to make those customers happy because of the misalignment of expectations. One of our core tenets is we track everything. If I'm boarding a new partner, I'm tracking that all within CRM. What deals are we working on together? What deals did we swing and miss? What deals did we win? And, then I can pull those reports.

The Marketo partnership has not been all roses and champagne either. Marketo's gone through some pretty big market shifts. During the course of our partnership, they've gone from 20 employees to 1,500 employees. They've gone public, and then they were taken back private. There are major continental shifts that we've seen within that organization, and the org today behaves fundamentally differently than it did when we first rolled out our partnership and I wrote a contract on the back of a napkin. So, as it's progressed, the data has really enabled me to come to those partner conversations and say, "Look, this is data from 2013. Look at the data from '15. You're my largest competitor right now," which at one point Marketo was my largest competitor.

So, you have to be able to back up those shifts with actual data, and what I actually find, certainly within larger organizations, is they're often not well-positioned to gather that data themselves, or there's been so much turnover or process shift internally that they're actually using my dataset as law to describe the success of the partnership. So track everything, and that makes those conversations a little bit easier as you get into that data, and everyone can look at the same thing and agree that, yeah, this isn't working and maybe there's a solution to that, or maybe it's time to go our separate ways. But regardless, we can't blame it on emotion at that point, we want to blame it on something that's tangible, that's real.

Jen: That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure there are a lot of organizations that you've partnered with that have benefited from the fact that you are gathering that kind of data. Unfortunately, for a lot of companies that are growing a million miles a minute it does seem sometimes like an afterthought, just this extra thing to do. But, it is extremely important, especially when you're balancing those resources and trying to figure out where to spend your time. So, do you also use that data that you might have with one partnership to help determine what success looks like in another partnership? Do you keep that internally and leverage that as a baseline?

Justin: Yeah, so we'll introduce that baseline in partnership conversations. We're potentially looking at a new partnership right now, and normally the first question out of my mouth is what does your most successful partnership look like? You can get a big feel for how that process is going to go by the data that they're able to present. If they're more on the fluffy side of, "Well, we do some activities together. They sponsor our trade show every year or our conference. We do some marketing together," I'll know that this is not as data-driven as we want it to be because I want to see sales pipeline.

I want to see the amount of revenue that you've closed together in the last 18 months. What does the joint sales cycle look like? So, absolutely, we've taken that data collection and turned it into a benchmark to which we hold other potential partnerships. The question always exists out there of there’s this new company and they don't have a long track record, but we think there's a lot of potential. And, those are going to exist.

When we partnered with Engagio, they were less than 12 months old at that point, but, fortunately, they were made up by the who's who of previous Marketo employees. So, there was some faith that was included within that partnership as well, knowing that Jon Miller's not going to start an organization that's going to tank. Again, that's where you have to kind of leverage those relationships, whether it's data-driven or it's relationship-driven, insight is the key out of either one of those points.

Jen: All right. You could say that that relationship originally came out of good data as well, so that was definitely a very, very, very safe bet. Okay. So, I have one last official channel question for you, and that is, what’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone who's really trying to breathe life back into their channel partner program? We see this a lot, we see a lot of organizations who start a program. And they probably under-resourced it, or they expected to do one thing, it does something else, and now they're kind of back at it ready to reinvest. If you could give that person, that organization, or that leader advice, what would it be?

Justin: Yeah, I really do love data, but, moreover, I love getting to the why. I don't just want to hop on a phone call or go to a meeting and ask that question. I want to see it firsthand. So, my number one piece of advice to our internal folks or anyone that's in charge of managing partner relationships is get out there and get embedded within that partner. We love to go out into bullpens and just work for a day and see what those conversations look like at that partner organization. Are they mentioning us? Are they having conversations that we could be assisting but we're not being tapped to come in and be that resource?

I love getting embedded within those environments and just seeing how their process works. Is another partner there when you show up? We've had that happen before. I had one of my competitors literally officing out of Marketo for a while, and we were like, "Wow, we really need to up our game," because they've got a level of access that we're just not taking advantage of right now. So we immediately said, "We'd love to get a cube here and park ourselves two days out of every week." And we flew someone over, and I actually eventually lit up a sales team in San Francisco to be closer to them. That insight would've never come about if I hadn't made a trip over there and just said, "I'm going to sit in your bullpen and see what these conversations sound like." Ultimately, you want to understand what does that sales pitch sound like? Where do they struggle? Where do they need help? Where can I provide some value? Simply saying, "You need to help me sell into your customer base," or, "You need to sell my services," is not going be effective.

Communicating “We have to have a solution-based message. So, when you're running up against this objection, we can help, and I heard your sales reps combat that objection a dozen times when I was out onsite.” So, I really do think that kind of that employee exchange approach is a highly valuable exercise, and, regardless of whether that has to do with partner or any other aspects of the business, I really do encourage our employees to get out there, get embedded with the partner, and understand why aren't we more successful in this partnership? I guarantee you will learn something that you would not have had you not been in that close proximity.

Jen: Absolutely. Gosh, that collaboration is unbelievable. Such good advice, and such an awesome story, too. Now, before we totally wrap this up, at the end of the podcast I always ask people some more kind of personal questions to get to know them a little bit. I make it a speed round, but I don't know how fast we end up really going, but just four questions. Are you up for it?

Justin: Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it.

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

Justin: My favorite city is San Francisco, California.

Jen: Me too. I'm going to ask you why. See, I do this, I make it not be speedy because I want to ask more questions.

Justin: I lived in San Francisco for two years, really for the purposes of assisting in LeadMD’s growth, and, I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, so probably not the most culturally diverse epicenter in the world. It just blew my mind to be able to walk down the street and get the best food in the world, walk into a networking group and everyone's leaning forward and engaged, and participating in these conversations. It just seemed like everyone wanted to be there, and that's kind of how I describe San Francisco.

You could throw an event in Arizona, and struggle to get five people to show up. I was part of a Bulldog meet up when I was over there, and like 30, 40 people would show up with their Bulldogs every week. And, I was like, "Jesus, I can't get this level of engagement when I'm giving away free training, much less trying to get Bulldogs to show up to a meet up." So, it just seemed very intentional, and I love intentional things.

Jen: So, side note...I'm gonna help you. We're going to lobby together for, like, a high speed train between Phoenix and San Francisco.

Justin: Yeah, absolutely.

Jen: So, that'll be a pet project in our free time, Justin.

Justin: Hyperloop.

Jen: Yeah. The next question for you was going to be are you an animal lover? You mentioned the Bulldogs, so is that a yes?

Justin: I am. Yeah, I love bull breeds, and I love English Bulldogs. I have a 10-year-old English Bulldog named Chubs. It's a girl. I wanted to give her a complex early in life. When that dog's no longer around, I will absolutely be heartbroken. So, yeah, I love animals, love dogs.

Jen: All right. Question number three. Mac or PC?

Justin: Mac, a thousand times.

Jen: Yeah. And, question number four. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip. Where would it be to?

Justin: Oh, that's a really good one. I've got this weird philosophy on life that I love really new experiences in really comfortable places. So, I would actually probably go to St. Thomas. It's my favorite spot on earth, but I'd love to try to figure out some new stuff when I was down there. The last time I was down there we found this little secluded pool that is in this outcropping of rocks on one of the many islands that surround St. Thomas. So, I think it's just one of those places where you can go and find something new every single time, and definitely one of my favorite places on earth.

Jen: Sounds wonderful. Well, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. It was so awesome getting a chance to talk to you about channel, about partnerships on both sides of that fence. If anyone who's listening would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Justin: I'm looking forward to being the only guest on this show ever that actually loves using Twitter, so you can hit me up at @jgraymatter on Twitter, or you can check us out. Our site leadmd.com. I'd like to say we give away more best practices than most agencies have. So, all of our content's there available for free, and, of course, my contact information is there as well.

Jen: Wonderful. Well, again, thank you, and thank you all for joining us for The Allbound Podcast. We'll catch you next week with an all-new episode.

Justin: Thanks, Jen.

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