Messaging in the Parter Channel

Chris Blackman: Foreign.

Paul Clinton: Uh, hey there, it's Paul Clinton again. And welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing, how to Stand out, the podcast that interviews, uh, sales and marketing leaders about real challenges around go to market, messaging, business strategy and alignment between sales and marketing. Um, today we have an interesting interview for you. We're going to go into the enterprise. Uh, we spoke with Chris, uh, Blackman who's the um, director of global marketing. Ah, over product, partner and content strategy with AvePoint. Uh, that's an enterprise, uh, software company. Uh, Chris has a broader go to market role where she leads marketing campaigns and enablement for the partner channel. Uh, we talked about how she approaches messaging as well as sales and buyer enablement for this indirect GTM motion. Um, so hey Chris, thanks for joining the podcast. What are some of the key things that you get involved in? Um, as someone who's in charge of partner marketing, uh, as opposed to just kind of straight up growth marketing or marketing, uh, in the B2B channel to the end user. Just maybe if you could walk us through a little, set that up a little for us.

Chris Blackman: Sure. So AvePoint is a, uh, we provide data protection solutions for, pardon me, both um, enterprise businesses and for our indirect channel. Um, so what does that mean? That is um, part of what my job is. This data protection definition is still a little nebulous and um, the solutions and the services that it enables partners to sell are still being kind of defined. Right. And it's ever evolving. So a, um, large part of my job is educating the market on exactly how you can bring all of our different solutions together into partner solution one, Partner service that they can then resell and service on behalf of the end customer. So my job, even though my title is global partner marketing, it's really think about it more as partner gtm. So there is the marketing piece of it, of course, but there's also the partner program, product marketing and sales enablement, technical enablement. Um, there's a whole slew of things that go into activating and enabling a partner in order to operate and sell and service on your behalf. Um, so when it comes to the actual marketing piece of my job, channel is a little bit more nuanced because uh, there's your traditional B2B play where we're trying to bring a partner business into our ecosystem. So we're trying to sell a partner on our solutions are going to be the best thing for your business, going to help you make money. Then we also have through partner marketing which is us helping the msp, the si, the Reseller, um, sell on, on their own behalf to the end customer. So in that motion, we're not leading with AvePoint, we're leading with the partners value proposition. So it really requires us to have an intimate knowledge of um, the, the partner market landscape, what's going on in the indirect channel, all of the different opportunities, the tam, all of that. Um, but also we have to be intimately familiar with the end customer market as well. So who are part of selling these services to. So we have to dive deep into different verticals and different use cases. And so it's a little bit more nuanced than just your direct channel B2B marketing.

Paul Clinton: And so what are some of the, um, kind of challenges for you or pain points for you or what are some of the, the things that maybe some obstacles that you're kind of dealing with and, and what are some of the things you've tried to, um, to kind of deal with some of those obstacles, um, in that, in that context.

Chris Blackman: Um, so I would say one of the biggest challenges for any vendor, especially a vendor that has historically been direct only, that's trying to move into the channel. You know, I've got years and years of consulting experience, experience underneath my belt. And so I've worked with a ton of vendors moving into the channel. And they all want to lead with their logo, which is great when you're trying to recruit partners into your ecosystem. But when it's about helping partners sell on your behalf, no, no end Customer cares about AvePoint. They care about what the partner's value proposition is, what the partner can do for their business. And so it's a little bit of a mind shift there in realizing that the vendor has to take a step back and they have to play a supporting role. They're not the star in that through partner motion. Um, so that's one thing. And then the other is really trying to tie together um, that marketing, sales and product. Try to envision that as a Venn diagram. And where those three things meet up is where your good channel go to market experts live is in that kind of convergence between sales enablement, talking about sales outcomes, you know, what are you trying to drive from an ARR perspective? How can you pull levers in the marketing world in order to reach those objectives? And then finally how does that all roll back up into the product's value proposition? How can uh, these three things really converge in that one sweet spot to really, you know, win the jackpot on gdm?

Paul Clinton: Well, and let's unpack that a little bit more you know, a, ah, big thing for us, you know, and the companies we work with is, is trying to help them get a little better alignment with um, you know, sales and marketing. And we, we try to, to do that by um, you know, starting with uh, business strategy like make. Making sure that they have a DDL icp, making sure that uh, they've done work on their positioning and differentiators, making sure that they're using messaging that, that doesn't sou, um, making sure that their, their ah, website actually speaks to their icp. Um, but um, you know, do you have some thoughts on, on you know, as a bigger company? A point is, I guess, um, you know, as an enterprise company, uh, do you have some thoughts about um, you know, ways that that um, you know, companies, enterprise or even lower, um, can kind of achieve that, that alignment? I would imagine you, you know, you, you believe in something like that, uh, we shouldn't all be siloed. Right. So what are some ways, you know, from a marketing standpoint? I mean some people look at it as like, okay, the marketing department needs to be in service to sales, which sales might believe that. Right. Um, and then you've got, um, okay, the executive suite, um, you know, is looking to set certain KPIs maybe uh, for marketing or for sales. And are those KPIs different and do they align? But you know, talk a little bit about that aspect of it. I mean, uh, how, you know, how we can, you know, better get that alignment, um, to sort of, you know, have these all have these departments, you know, all supporting each other and you know, and they go to motion. Sorry, the go to market motions.

Chris Blackman: Yeah. So it's really critically important that marketing and sales do not work in silos, that they are not in competition. And AvePoint does a really good job of that. Um, so the way we kind of approach it is we take a look at the strategic priorities that the elt, the investors, the board, um, hand down to us for the organization. Right. And then I'm in a global role. So each region um, operates differently according to their local nuances. They've each got different nuances in their market. Um, and then, so we'll sit down with the sales leads for each one of these regions and talk about, okay, what are your strategic imperatives that are going to help you reach your KPIs this year? Whether that's partner recruit, um, it's a specific SKU that they're getting commissioned on. Whether it is a talk track that's resonating really well. With partners. Um, so then we take a look at how can marketing support that message. And then sales at the same time is looking at marketing saying, okay, here's what I want to say. Now you help me define and make a little smoother exactly how I say it, how I go out into the market with this value proposition. And again it's twofold. Right. So we've got to show the partner how they can make money with AvePoint. That's all the partner wants to know. Right. You know, there's a million different solutions out there for backup. Right. But AvePoint, uh, is the best partner for you because we can help you make money in these ways. And here's what that ROI looks like. And then moving M again so that

Paul Clinton: ROI cases, that's a pretty big part of your messaging is making that ROI case.

Chris Blackman: Absolutely, absolutely. Partners want to know a few things. How can they make money with you? They want to know that your direct sales team is not going to come in and snake their deals. They want to know the things like deal registration, NDF request and proof of performance things. You know, all these different levers that we try to pull with partners are as easy as possible and they want to make sure that their efforts are getting rewarded, whether that's moving up tiers or AvePoint has a point points based program for partners, uh, where they can earn points and then redeem them for actual other benefits or in some cases for cash. Um, so they want to make sure that they're getting rewarded for those efforts and it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

Paul Clinton: And so talk a little bit about, you know, what you can do from a marketing standpoint, um, to support that, you know, either I don't know how you would look at it in terms of, would you look at it in terms of sales enablement? Would you look at it in terms of buyer enablement? And what are some of the, what are some of the levers that you can pull or what are some of the things you can do to help with um, that in terms of battle cards or do you do a lot of competitive, do you do win loss analysis? Do you do competitive head to head analysis with different competitors? And what does that look like when you're in the partner channel because you're not talking to an end user customer who might, um, you know, have some discussions, have had a lot of discussions with different competitors and might be telling you some, telling your sales team, you know, a certain FUD that's been mentioned or you know, uh, by uh, competitors that they've Also talked to. So you're kind of trying to straighten that out a little bit and you're trying to um, you know, have some, some talking points to respond to certain things. Sorry, kind of a long winded question. But you know, uh, talk a little bit about what buyer enablement or sales enablement looks like, um, for you.

Chris Blackman: Yeah. So when it comes to competitive analysis, we have an entire team that's devoted to that. Um, and so that again, it's twofold. Right. So um, it's one thing for us to go up against our competitors in conversations with the partner to convince them our technology is the best, but not just our technology and our capabilities, but also how easy is it to do business with us? Right. So that's one piece. When the partner goes to market, that end customer, again, doesn't care about, um, the originating vendor. They don't look at, oh, well, this partner is selling AvePoint, but this other partner is selling Veeam. And so therefore I'm going to go with AvePoint. Right. They want to know about the partner's capabilities and the partner, partner's value proposition. So it's a whole different competitive landscape when you take a look at it through that lens.

Paul Clinton: So do you feel like you, you, um, you don't have to do as much, um, you know, in terms of, in terms of, of battle cards, uh, can you, can you develop some materials that, that um, can help you win deals, um, you know, that are, you know, a step away, so to speak?

Chris Blackman: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we really focus when we're helping our partners position themselves competitively. We focus on capabilities and so we try to focus on the capabilities that we enable the partner to provide to that end user. And so it's all about enabling the partner. It's educating them, it's making sure that we are in lockstep, uh, joint discovery calls, value proofing assessments, um, you know, anything like that that we can co sell and co market with a partner in order to win more in their market. So it's really about, you know, yes, we have to be competitive with the other players in our space, the other providers in our space, in order to get that partner into our ecosystem. But then a step beyond that, we have to help that partner be competitive in um, their local markets.

Paul Clinton: And how do you feel about co branding? Um, just real quick, how do you feel about co branding? I mean, do you feel like that's still valuable or.

Chris Blackman: Um, sure, yeah, yeah, there's definitely a time and place for co brandable materials. Um, I am of, uh, the firm belief, though, that when we are helping a partner go to market, we need to lead with their services. So anything that I develop for a partner to help them go to market, Halfpoint plays a supporting role. The star is always the partner.

Paul Clinton: Cool. I'm just gonna ask you one last question and I'll let you go, um, you know, talk a little bit just about the messaging and, uh, how you connect that to, um, your business strategy and your icp. I mean, do you guys look at the ICP figure fairly regularly and is that continuously updated or, uh, have you. Is it just kind of set it and forget it and then you know what to do?

Chris Blackman: No. An ideal partner profile is definitely not something that should just live in a slide deck. It needs to be revisited pretty regularly. Especially because in the technology world, things move so fast, innovation happens so fast. AvePoint has, um, new solutions, new features, new capabilities being released all the time. And on the other side of that, we've got investors that are looking at the market too, saying, you know, what are you guys doing about this, you know, untapped TAM or this partner type that you haven't, um, historically worked with? And so our ELT is very good at taking a look globally and saying, okay, as an organization, where are we going? And then for each region, how are we going to get there? And so that IPP is, it's not a globally homogenous thing. It's very much a living document. It's very much a living philosophy, right, that changes region to region. Um, and it changes with every capability that AvePoint comes out with because it's, you know, going to be applicable to a different partner type or a different business model.

Paul Clinton: Fantastic. And, you know, thank you so much. You know, it's been a really great conversation. I appreciate you sharing this with us. Um, I know you're super busy, so just thanks for taking a couple minutes out of your schedule to join us. Thank you.

Chris Blackman: Um, my pleasure.