142 | Partner ops isn't optional anymore

Speaker A: So welcome to another episode of the Tech Marketing Podcast, um, and part of our channel series. Actually, we're really excited to be speaking to some real future leaders in the channel and B, uh, 2B marketing space. So I'm joined by Antonio, head of global partner operations at Tricentis, is that right?

Speaker B: Correct, Tricentis.

Speaker A: So I mean we spoke quite, uh, a little while while ago now. It's been a busy, busy space in the, in the channel area really because we, we've all been to lots of events. Um, but welcome to the B2B Marketing Podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here, Antonio.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me, John. And thank you for having me, Seb. Uh, it's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker A: So of course I'm also joined by Seb. Seb, welcome back to the Tech Marketing Podcast. You're joining me for all of these, all, uh, of our channel series of where, you know, we're speaking to channel people both across marketing ops, um, and a variety of different roles. So this is, I think this is our first one we're kicking off with, am I right?

Speaker C: It is, it is.

Speaker A: So you're going to hear a lot more of seven me coming. Coming through this. But, um, Antonio, coming. Going to you for a second. Like, you began your career as a telecoms engineer, is that right?

Speaker B: Correct. I, um, maybe not exactly my career, but I'm a telecom engineer by college if need be. Um, and I worked in telecoms for several years before diving into the world of partnerships. So that is correct.

Speaker A: Like how did it. Like we all have our own little story. I think on the channel side. I'm gonna, by the way, I'm gonna use channel, partner and ecosystem completely interchangeably today because we, we just, you know, it's evolving so much itself. But we all have our own stories, um, when we talk about channels and partners, about how we fel. So how did you end up going from a telecoms engineer to being partner operations today?

Speaker B: That's a good question. So, um, I worked in telecom for a few years back in Mexico. I'm originally from Mexico and I decided to come to the United States to get my mba. Got uh, my MBA at Carolina. And it was there that I specialized in sales and marketing. Um, and I happened to get an internship at IBM back then and it was an internship within the channel's division of IBM within partner World, um, where we did, we, we did a few different things throughout the internship. But uh, after I got the offer to become full time and IBM said like Antonio, you'd be great. You'd be great at this thing we call channel sales. We could channel partnerships. Um, do you want to take a dive into it? And I took a dive and I didn't look back. And I've been in the industry. Well, I've been in the space because it's been different industries, um, but I've been in the space doing partnerships in one way or another for almost 15 years.

Speaker A: So, yeah, it's great. I think it's crazy how many of us potentially started at IBM as well. Um, it's such a, uh. But certainly back in like 2005, I think they're the only company pushing this kind of model at this kind of scale. We're talking about, um. Seb, I'm actually going to ask you the same question because we're going to be doing this channel series like where. How did you fall into the channel space?

Speaker C: So I fell in. It's more like a second career for me in many ways, because the first half of my career was spent in technology, but much more in TV and advertising production, um, around the advent of the Internet in the noughties, and working in a creative business, but bringing technology to help manage processes that previously were all analog. So in effect using the cloud. So I kind of feel like my career took off probably with the advent of the cloud as uh, an actual way of working. And then I moved, relocated, um, to live where I do today and joined a, uh, marketing business that had one main client which was Dell Technologies. And we worked really, uh, around comms and helping manage partner communications, um, in EMEA and then in APAC and in North America. And I saw the same opportunity that I had in my previous world, which was a lot of people with very big objectives and big tasks, but not with always, not with the tools necessarily to fulfill them. Um, and there was a lot of processes in the channel space, particularly marketing. We could see where automation would be a big win. Things were very manual, um, data could help drive that automation. And that's kind of where I started really, partner marketing. But it's kind of expanded into all elements of running partner programs, um, and partnering, whether it's sales, um, enablement, compliance, still marketing, kind of like the whole piece, um, in a way. So yeah, my entry point is part of my personal journey.

Speaker A: I guess we all just fall into it really. I think that's where we end up. We all just fall into partners. So Antonio, coming back to your role at IBM, so if I understood that correctly, you played a role launching partner initiatives. Is that Right, correct, correct.

Speaker B: So I started my career at IBM, um, working with resellers. Resellers, uh, and distributors. Right. Um, and that's where I truly got my feet wet. Uh, and I started learning about the inner workings of traditional channel per se. Um, but later I started um, getting the responsibility of other programs around um, sis, around solution providers, around service providers. And eventually, um, eventually we created this task force that I was leading around, um, the early days of tech partnerships inside of IBM. Right. Uh, integrations. So back then didn't have a name. Um, and what we did was we identified uh, basically a way to work through up and coming marketplaces. Not only the AWS, the Azures and GCPs of the world, but the distributors back then were flipping and switching their ways into marketplaces. And so Aero was creating Aerosphere, um, Ingram, uh, was creating Cloud Blue, um, Tech Data acquired Avnet and then Tech Data got acquired by Synnex and then they created Stream 1 in that whole thing. And then there were also the born of the cloud distributors, right. The directs of the world, the epic sites of the world and telcos. My background were creating marketplaces and creating big things through marketplaces. Right. So I spent six years doing that being me and my team were kind of like, let's call it like the middle layer, doing partnerships internally and externally because we were partnerships agnostic and we were working with multiple IBM brands to bring them into our layer of APIs and then our layer of APIs would connect to partners. Right. And so we were truly doing partnerships both ways. Um, and being the connector between those things, right. Uh, between the marketplaces and the different products inside of IBM. And I think we got to the point we were working with like something like 11 IBM brands and 170 something products, um, within our portfolio. And uh, some of them were very, very, very successful.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And so yeah, I did, I did a little bit of everything. Well, a lot of everything inside of 5em. Right.

Speaker A: So even in our prep call we didn't touch on the detail there, Antonio. There's some, there's some really like, let's give a bit of context over uh, the dates we're talking about here. So you joined there 15 years ago. So 2010.

Speaker B: 2011.

Speaker A: 2011 till. Based on those years, what? 20, 20, 21 till 20. Okay. So you were there a while.

Speaker B: I was an IBM for 10 years. Yeah.

Speaker A: Because, uh, talking about some of the elements you mentioned, you're built, you know, you built a marketplace of API. It's like we are now living in a world of, uh, mcps, if anyone knows what those terms is like, the future of what APIs become like, that was, that felt, you know, incredibly forward thinking. Like, did you, I guess there's no really other way of asking this. Did you feel like you were on the cutting edge of building an ecosystem at the time or did it just feel like this was the obvious answer?

Speaker B: I think it was the obvious answer. And the reason is not only were we seeing our partners move that way, we were seeing customers looking to buy that way. Customers looking to buy in a centralized place where they can bundle offerings that, where they can bundle products and where they can get everything in a single one stop shop. Right. Single pane of glass, single one stop shop, one bill for everything. Uh, centralized everything. Right. And so, and so while it felt cutting edge within IBM and within the big partners in the industry, um, it was the way to go right now. Still, like, we always found the roadblocks of people saying like, why would I change if something works, don't change it. You're gonna cannibalize my sales. I'm not gonna change the way I do things. And you'll always find that you're always gonna have, you know, the curve of adoption, like the early adopters, the gap and all that. Um, but yeah, back then, back then it felt, I think it's a little bit of both. It felt revolutionary, but at the same time it didn't feel revolutionary. It felt like obvious and it felt like we need to do this if we, if we want to stay alive. Um, so I guess it's a little bit of both.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, it's interesting. So our time in the channel is almost exactly the same. So thinking about dates I started, end of 2011 is when I began this role that uh, exposed me to channel. And I guess that's that adoption curve. It's the same at that point was businesses that were building themselves around cloud services and consumption models and recurring revenue versus all of the legacy businesses that uh, were transactional. And so it was challenging. So you got some businesses that would go build a business around the new model, which is definitely, we can see with marketplaces is totally valid, like viable. Um, while other businesses are trying to adapt and kind of transition all of their cost base, which is not simple.

Speaker B: Right, Right. I mean, I can tell you one thing and that is building this. Um, we broke a lot of things. Um, we broke a lot of things, which is something that I always joke around, that I love breaking things, um, but I love rebuilding things as well. Right. If I Don't, not doing it today. But if you ever, uh, I'm in a call with me, are in a call with me. Like I normally am fidgeting with something and it's normally a pen and I'm like putting it apart and building it again. So I'm, I was a big LEGO fan when I was a kid. I love destroying things and rebuilding things in different ways and understanding the inner workings. And um, in part of that was this, right? We, for us to become successful with what we did, we had to break a lot of things. One of them was we were some of the first few people that truly managed to unlock, um, cross border selling within IBM, right? Because IBM is very broken up in different entities around the world. Even within Europe you have IBM Germany and IBM, uh, UK and IBM France and IBM Spain and all that. Uh, but in the world of the European Union you need free flow of goods, right? And so one of the things that we couldn't, that a lot of people back then couldn't figure out is how, how can we allow a partner in Germany to sell to a customer in France? Oh, uh, and by the way, their distributor might happen to be in Sweden. Right. Um, and through a lot of knocking on doors and a lot of working on things that I never thought in my career would have to learn, especially a lot of fine, uh, print and contract reading, a lot of accounting rules, a lot of those things, um, we managed to do it. We managed to do it. Um, and so it was a lot of iteration, a lot of trial and error and a lot of failure in the way, but a lot of failure in the way. It's like, okay, pick yourself back up and keep going, keep going. Feel fast, right? Fail fast, but keep going. Uh, and we became very successful with certain IBM brands.

Speaker A: I'd love to understand more about the things you broke, but I guess probably another way of putting this is what did you find building something that I was going to say is certainly a few years ahead of its time. How did you find out which bits were missing? Cross border selling was one that you just mentioned. How did you find the other bits that were. And what do you think is still missing from a partner ecosystem of that degree?

Speaker B: Uh, I think some of the things that we also identified that we're missing, um, came from truly going and talking to our customers and our partners. Right. One of the things that we identified back then was customers telling us, hey, I love your product. I just don't want to deal with you like hey, I love your product, but I Don't want to sign your contract because I feel like I'm signing my life away. Right. And so because of that I want to go through a partner, I want to go through X, Y, Z. Right. And, and in the same way then we would go to the partners like how can we make this better for you? Right. And what do we need to do? Well, you have to bring down your, Your agreement is 27 pages long. It should not be that hard. You don't need 27 pages for what we're doing. Right. Um, how can we trim down our agreement to five pages? How can we do things click and accept. How can we truly get our partner experience better that then will drive our customer experience better to keep that adoption going up? Right. And so things like that were some of the things that we identified. Um, obviously moving things into a new world. You tend to find out that things get coded very rigidly. Like we, we found out that some of our quota cash systems or even some of our SKUs, uh, within the system where were created a very certain way. And when you start thinking about like, how can a company that's supposed to be forward thinking build something that is set in stone and it's really hard to change. Right? And so like, okay, we need to, we need to uh, chink at that stone and we need to change this kind of thing, right? And we need to build it in a way that we know it's going to change eventually. Right. It needs to be adaptable, it needs to be flexible, it needs to be, it needs to be able to be, to evolve and not. We're not building for something to be again 10 years, five years from now for it to be stuck again. Right. And so it's, those are the part that some of the things that we kept uncovering and covering as you peel the layers of the onion, right. So it was not an easy task, but uh, took some time but uh, I can say we were successful.

Speaker C: That's great. I relate to the story because I feel like at the heart of it is the challenge of driving change from within and not kind of in a top down process which lots of businesses go through with consultancies. And how do we improve our margin by shortening supply times and so on. But what we do in effect is take specific areas and then go, how do we design an improvement that can kind of last along which you can build the next bit and the next bit.

Speaker B: You're right. Our division within Partner World was transformation. So um, we were part of that. Right now the funny Thing that comes with it, or maybe not that funny, is that we always joked about like, hey, we have to generate a billion dollars, but we have $10 of investment. Right? And so it's a lot of glue and duct tape and uh, and sticks to put things together. And then once they're working and it's a lot of pilot programs, it's a lot of literal, like really tiny experiments that, that you keep growing and keep growing and uh, as you keep growing, as you start having those successes, then you can, okay, here's the success. Can I get a little bit more? Can I get a little bit more? Right? And that's how you get there.

Speaker A: So yeah, like I would always like thinking about it and it's very similar to building a product. Um, and so my, by the way, my first drop into the channel was building a product for the channel.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: As Seb mentioned. And you know the phrase we always, we like to throw around, which maybe is just an excuse for us not wanting to do things properly is like perfection is the enemy of progress. Right. So trying to build something that is incredibly flexible, that might meet every need of now and in the future is still a quite time consuming thing to do. But you're right, some of these. We had a similar problem with a client last week where they had two quote to cash systems that they couldn't reconcile, uh, that are built very rigidly. How do you know which battles to fight, I guess is what I'm saying. Like how do you know when to perfect something and when, and when to polish it and when to step back and say, this is good enough, let's get it launched?

Speaker B: I mean, you bring something up and you just quoted Churchill, which is, it's a quote that I use all the time.

Speaker A: Uh, not intentionally quoted Churchill, but I'll take that.

Speaker B: But it's, it's, it's, it's a quote that I, that I use all the time, which is perfection is the enemy of progress. Right. Um, and uh, and it's true, it's. I think there's two things to, to know and that is. And to always remember. Um, one is that it's good, like just keep going and keep iterating and don't get stuck in uh, analysis paralysis and perfectionism. Right. Because then you're not going to keep moving forward. Right. Especially when you are, when you don't control on a lot of things. Um, in the world that we live in, which is partnerships, we do depend on a lot of collaboration on a lot of other things. But guess what? All those other, all those other teams, just like our partners have other things to do, have their own businesses to run. Right. And if you get stuck in perfectionism and not in uh, and not in like you're not progressing, um, guess what? Eventually they're going to move on. Why? Because they have other things to do. Right. Uh, but at the same time, and super important thing that people need to remember is that boring is not bad. You need to understand that sometimes the best decision and the best outcome might be boring. But guess what? It's the most effective. You don't have to be shiny and flashy and all that boring. I put out things that are very flashy and ah, I'm very. What I would think like, oh, this is super cool in front of my partners. And my partners tell me like, no. And that's one of the really good lessons I learned is like, don't build in a vacuum and then try to come out and then go to them and ask them like, what do you think about this? Because you might have spent three, four, five, six months in something that is useless. Right. But at the same time I put some, some things in front of them that in my opinion is super boring. And they're like, this is fantastic. This is just exactly what I needed to keep rolling and to keep growing. Right. Boring is not bad boring. Sometimes it's really good.

Speaker C: Yeah. No, I love that. I mean, I think so often when you were talking about how do we make our partner experience a bit better, uh, how do we help that drive customer experience. So much of it is small moments that are actually not perceptibly, uh, you know something, it's like if we're going to be more useful, we need to be relevant, specific, timely, actionable, you know, and if a partner experiences those four things, you've just helped someone. I just need to do this because that will happen and that's a good thing.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: So it's not spectacular, it's not, it's, it's efficient and effective, but it's, it's those simple attributes, you know, we can just surface those all the time. Suddenly gradually people will start to go. I do enjoy these experiences, you know, as well as talking to someone. It's like I'm actually just getting the right information when I need it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, let's be honest, a lot of times when you are looking to buy a tool, um, bring something into your tech stack, more often than not the things that end up making, like the decision maker, uh, choosing you or choosing somebody Else or you choosing a specific thing. It boils down to the boring things like m. Yes. The bells and whistles and all of this. Right. But it ultimately boils down to like, these are my needs, which are normally the boring things. Can you do the boring things and the needs, what I need. Right, exactly.

Speaker A: But sometimes, like we both said a couple of different words, they're both boring and simple.

Speaker B: Um, simple.

Speaker A: But I, but I, but I think it's, you know, sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones. Um, and they provide the most amount of flexibility and the most, and the most ability for us to grow. Which brings us, um, on to a great kind of a segue into our next topic, which is kind of, I'm going to say, talking about boring and simple. Let's talk about partner Ops. That sounds like a bad segue, but really very sorry. Um, but let's jump into like why, why do we think, you know now Partner Ops, the role that you fall into, Antonio, is why do we think it's having a moment? Um, what's, what's been. The reasons that it's become so important now?

Speaker B: I think there's multiple. But um, the simple, boring and potentially um, uh, interesting answer is if sales has sales ops in the go to market engine, if you're mature enough as rev ops, why those partnerships never have partner Ops. Right?

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: So let's, let's start with that. So the most important thing here that happens, uh, and the reason why Partner Ops is having a moment is because for I don't know how many years at this point we see the death cycle in partnerships. Right. Which means a company keeps hearing about how Microsoft does 95% of the revenue through partners and all that. And they're like, I want to do that. Right. Not that anybody can ever replicate the Microsoft model. Um, if somebody, if a small company does, please point me towards them. But, um, but basically everybody keeps hearing about this until a founder CEO says like, I want to do that. Let's, let's, let's dedicate a little bit of budget to that. And they hire a partner leader, Vega, VP or via Senior Director of Partnerships. Um, that person gets afforded normally 12 to 18 months if they're lucky, um, and maybe a couple of headcount. But guess what? They need to generate ROI real fast. They're revenue generators. Right. And so because of that, that partner leader has a couple of partner managers and they spend, they want to spend 80, 90% of their time building partnerships, proper partnerships, not paper partnerships, creating uh, proper marketing and sales plans, creating Proper goals and targets and working towards them, doing QBRs and then being out there with the partners driving deals, right? Guess what? Everything else falls out. Everything else, nobody does it. Which is working on proper contracting, working in proper partner experience, all the quota cash, um, things they do not have the time, most importantly to create all the foundation behind the scenes, to properly capture information and then have the metrics to show their ROI and their work. Um, and so all those things fall through the cracks, right? There's nobody doing it. And so teams now after that dead cycle, um, because then that they don't have the results to show for or they, they do have the results to show, but guess what? They don't have the data. Um, then the partner leader gets fired, right? And then two years later the company goes again, like I want to try it again. Right. And so what happens is that now our leaders are identifying the fact that they need operational help. They need operational help with, from somebody running all of this behind the scenes from forecasting and metrics to compliance to budgets to um, to operations to process efficiency to et cetera, et cetera. And uh, finally I think leaders are realizing that maybe, maybe if you're too small, maybe you don't need a dedicated partner ops person, but you do need rev up sales ops help. Right? So at least sales ops giving you half, uh, a headcount or something like that. Right. But most of the leaders are now identifying and I have several friends in the industry, I'd say my first two hires are a partner manager and a partner ops person. Right. Because I, because the problem is that when you bring a partner ops person too late in the game, you might have, you might find a very hairy animal that is really hard to untangle process wise, um, uh, systems wise, your CRM, sms, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And so, so that's why I am of the, I'm a huge proponent of like yeah, I'm not going to advocate that you need a partner ops person right off the bat, but you do need a headcount either in sales ops or in revops. Doing this for you so that you can actually create a proper foundation and then scale from there.

Speaker A: M. And I completely agree by the way, but you've mentioned quite a few different things that we could dive into. Like when we talk about partner ops being a foundation, like what uh, are, what would you, how would you break down the different components that go into that foundation? Like what are the different pieces?

Speaker B: Great question. So I have my own framework and the way that I define this are four, four pillars that surround one central one. The four pillars that are around, the four foundational pillars are your systems, your tech, your metrics, how are you measuring everything and how are you capturing data, your programs, which is, how are you

Speaker A: building,

Speaker B: um, how do you, what would you call it? How are you building a world for your partners to come in and work with you and live within that, that world within your ecosystem. And then finally the last one is enablement, right? How are you ensuring that? From an enablement standpoint, an enablement includes, uh, alignment, right? From an enablement standpoint, this is not only external but also internal. How are you making sure that your company that the rest of your functional departments, marketing, sales, customer success, finance, um, if you have a deal, desk quota, cash slash, order management team, uh, et cetera, et cetera, how do they, do they understand what you're doing? Are you truly interrelated in that with them? Do you have champions within those organizations that are truly rowing your way? Um, and so it's those four pillars that if one is crooked, if one is cracked, as one is non existent, guess what? The house, the house is crooked, right? And eventually that house will fall down. So those are your four pillars and on top of those four pillars it's a fifth pillar. But think about it more like a uh, beam that rests on those four pillars and that is partner experience. If any of those four pillars is suffering, if any of those four pillars is not existent, guess what? Your partner experience is suffering somewhere. Either your partners are not getting properly enabled, either your partners don't have the right tools, uh, and it's hard to do. You're hard to do business with. Either the incentives are not there and they don't understand what they do with you, um, etc, etc. Uh, or hey, uh, the partner manager on the other side also has to go to their corner office and talk to her CEO and say like, hey, this is what I'm doing with Antonio. And if they don't have anything to show for, guess what? Their CEO is going to either tell them, hey, stop, uh, doing that and do something else, something that actually helps the company, or you know, and so um, it's those five pillars where my framework really basis itself on. And uh, and the ones that I normally when I come in, I score things, I do an audit, I looked at how we are doing in these four pillars. What is needed, what is missing, what is extra and we don't need it. Um, and then once you have that, how is partner experience looking and where are we, where do we have to solidify?

Speaker A: So it's four pillars with partner experience over the top. Is that right? So we've got um, tech met, uh, tech metrics. What was number three?

Speaker B: Programs.

Speaker A: Programs.

Speaker B: And enablement.

Speaker A: And enablement, yeah. Yeah. So like if, let's go through each one of those one by one for a second. Like tech. Yeah. Because if he, like as you mentioned, if, if, if it's four corners of a house, if one of them is wonky, the thing with it's falling down.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: Um, so where, what's the common issues you see across tech? Uh, in um, when we talk looking at partner ops framework.

Speaker B: So how are you keeping track of everything? Like you might start with your CRM, right. And so you need a single source. Single source of truth, please. Single source of truth. And that's going to be your CRM, right?

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Um, depending on where you are, you might be using a PRM, you might not be using a PRM. I know that people have feelings about PRMs, but a PRM, right. Um, do you have account mapping tools? Do you have um, what are the tools that your partners are using to interact with you? Like how are you, how are you doing contracting, how are you doing? Um, capture of opportunities, deal, uh, registration and so on and so forth. Uh, in some cases, hey, if they're, you have affiliates, you have referrals, how are they uh, bringing those leads into your system? Right. So that's, that's tech. Like if you're doing something around, um, I don't know, your IPP framework or you're doing partner prospecting, what tools are you using for that? How are you incorporating AI into this, into this whole, whole uh, thing? Have you thought about using a uh, GPT for uh, interacting with partners and interacting with your own internal team around questions? Right. That's where tug comes in. How frictionful or frictionless is it to do things with you systematically?

Speaker C: So really? Yeah. So you're looking at, uh, kind of it's from the edge to the core, isn't it? Like activities are happening in businesses with partners, with customers. It's like how are those activities coming into the system and how quickly and then how automated is it.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: Actually getting in. So whether it's driving metrics or reporting on metrics, triggering that internal conversation with someone around a deal or a new opportunity.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. Do I have to spend an hour on the phone with you, uh, every other month doing account mapping or do we have a tool that does it for us and in five minutes I know what I need to know, right? Or in less than five minutes, do I have to get on the phone every time I have a deal? Or do I have a way to just jump on Slack or jump on something to your portal or whatever to give you, like, hey Seb, I have a deal with Coca Cola. These are the details. Let's run with it, Take a look and let's run with it, get back to me when you can and things like that. Right? How easy is it to do this kind of things?

Speaker C: No, it makes sense. There's something because it's really interesting because when we look at uh, kind of the world we're in with our clients, definitely tech, tech stack, systems integration, data, uh, like we live that world and I think program as well, like designing that framework to manage requirements, benefits, expectations, like how you grow transparent, fair, even handed, really important. And then enablement again we see the need like that. These are all kind of competitive edges. Well it rolls up to partner experience, which is one of your competitive advantages if you can get it right. Because like we said before, like the IBM analogy of like, I love your product but it's just hard to work with you. Like that's a killer. But the bit I'm really interested in that we don't cross into as much, but we live it with our clients. Definitely is that internal alignment and the challenge that takes because so much time is spent looking inwards trying to, you know, whether it's justifying or trying to work out how is an MDF program actually going to function from like an OPEX perspective, like how does finance work, work in our business and how do I enable something with a partner that, that's really challenging. How much of your time do you think is spent on that internal alignment kind of requirement versus the pillars and the outward looking?

Speaker B: So it varies. Um, at Tricentis, I don't look a lot around the like MDF and those kind of things because we have a whole very robust partner marketing team. So they take care of that. At IBM, I did spend a lot of time on that and that megaport a little bit as well. Um, uh, but it's still like one of the things that me and my team do spend a lot of time, um, is how can we identify the proper partner at the right time and an opportunity. Right? Like let's say that you have a bunch of deals that are delayed, that are stalled, that are um, not progressing. How, how does the account executive understand which is the right partner to bring at the right time? Right? How, how do they Know what partner manager to go and work with, right? And um, or even one of the things that I've done in my past was, was using uh, I'm not going to plug who the company is but I, I use this call recording system that we creating a lot, we created a lot of tagging um, behind the scenes and basically this call recording system was scraping the calls and saying like hey, because your customer said A, B, C, D, E, F, G. We believe that this partner uh, would seriously help you move this opportunity. Right? Because this partner does five of the seven things that the customer said that they need along with your product. Right? Or because you're talking to customer A. I, we know that this other partner are ah, very solid with that customer. Why not bring them into the opportunity to help them close and potentially hey, make um, the deal larger, right? Because going a little bit, and I know I'm moving from pillars but moving a little bit into metrics. That's where things start coming in, right? That's where metrics matter. Because that's when you start realizing because a lot of times you're going to have an AE or a sales leader that says like no, no, no, no, no. Why, why, why would I involve a partner when I can close this on my own and not have to give margin up, right? And guess what, you're ready now there to have the conversation and say like well because A it's, it's well known that with the partners we can close faster. B it's well known that hey, our close rates with a partner are 3x right? And see, guess what? In our region, maybe within, maybe if you, if you have robust metrics enough, maybe within this sub territory of your of North America, let's say we uh, know that the average deal size when this partner is involved, guess what, it's 2.5x. Yeah. So yes, you gave maybe 20% margin but guess what, your deal is no longer $75,000. Your deal is now $250,000.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great, that's a great shout. So yeah so in a way like the metrics, naturally that data is what drives that alignment because it's just that more evidential seize opportunities.

Speaker A: What keeps going through my head and sorry, I'm bringing us back a little bit to the tech pillar and I know we're not going to get through all the four pillars now but I think we've touched on a few things is um, you know we use this term simple before. Like one problem I think we have with partner experience Is these aren't things that you can, they're a balance. You can't add more to make it better. Sometimes, uh, and getting that, like, that's one of the biggest mistakes I think I see many vendors making is, is adding more tech thinks you, it's more benefits for the partner, it's more enablement. It's, uh, you know, they're going to be, they're going to, going to feel they can have a better program and better incentives because of all this extra stuff that we've added. Um, and back to your point you made about simplicity, I actually think it makes that experience significantly worse. Um, like would, uh, you, do you have any guidance on that? Because it's something that I think many vendors are battling with.

Speaker B: Yes, tech debt is a real thing. Um, and not only for your partners. For your internal team, yes, you are adding a flashy new tool, but guess what? Your partner team, or your sales team in general already uses seven other tools. And guess what? They don't talk to each other. So it's piecemeal here and there. Yes, you have a source of truth in your CRM, but they still need to use the tool for XYZ for forecasting one thing for account mapping, another thing for your CRM, for sales tracking and lead tracking and everything, right? Tech debt is a real thing. And so there is a very fine balance. And especially when you start going out to partners like you say, John, and you give them like, hey, this is my PRM for deal registration, but I use this other tool for learning and enablement. And uh, I use this other tool for XYZ thing like for file sharing and for collaboration. In my mind, I'm a partner and I say like, okay, John, you're telling me that I need three logins and three passwords to do three different things with you. And by the way, you're not my only partner. I know you think you think I am, but no, you're not my only partner. Uh, I, me, myself, I only me partner manager. I work with 25 other partners that also give me three passwords and logins. Guess what? Like, yeah, I'm done. I'm done, right? So tech debt is a real thing. One of the things that is critical and one of the first things I always ask when bringing tech is like, how can we integrate this to get, to make it federated SSO1 login. And this is me being nerd, but I always call like one login to rule them. All right? Um, and so, um, if you're going to do that. You have to think of it as a seamless experience. How can you make sure that yes, a partner is using two or three platforms, but in their head they should not know this? It should feel seamless and it should feel like you're in the same experience. And everything should feel like you're within four to maximum five clicks from finding any assets, from doing anything with you. Four to five clicks, Right? And you will always, you always have to think about also the fact that maybe the majority of your partners have a few other vendors to work with. Right? But, uh, if you're trying to work with the GSI's of the world, with the hyperscalers of the world, guess what? An Accenture Deloitte has a thousand other vendors, if not more, guess what? There's more. But let's pretend a thousand other vendors asking them the exact same thing. So think about how do you make things super simple for them? And Accenture is never going to log on to your portal to do a deal registration. So think about alternatives. How can you add AI to capture. To capture deal registrations through an email or through Slack integrate, like, hey, they send you Slack and there's the deal registration in your, in your CRM. Right? So you have to think about that. But, but coming back to your point, John, um, tech debt is a real thing and you always have to think about tech fatigue. Not just because you're adding a shiny new tool. Does it mean that it's additive? It might be hurting more than you think of?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's an element of creating a toxic partner experience through too much tech, actually. And that's a very superfluous thing for me to say, but I think it's a real concern. But you mentioned people like Deloitte, big strategy players in this space. Let's come on to the strategy side of Partner Ops, which is you've touched on a few elements of this. How do you blend some of the items you talked about here are quite tactical, like single sign on me to deploy that single thing. How do you start to evolve Partner Ops into something that can be more of a strategic advisor role? Uh, not just as a. Not just a support function.

Speaker B: That's a great question. So I have this chart in my framework that goes from tactical to strategic. Right. Ultimately, the goal of Partner Ops, the goal of any Rev Ops team is first and foremost. Foremost. You have to think of yourself and you're always a call center. Right. But your main goal and your North Star is productivity. You are the engine of productivity. You are there to increase productivity. You're not there to just take manual work off of people and off of other teams. Why? Because if they're just putting on you a bunch of manual work that they don't want to do, guess what? You get buried in tactics. You will get very, very in manual work, and you are not fulfilling the job that you were hired for, which is to make them more productive. Right. Um, but the second thing, as you mentioned, John, is to become that strategic advisor. Right? And that. That is part of creating efficiencies and creating processes to understand at any given point in time why something is working, why something is not, and what are the right buttons to push. So we have a deal that is stalling. Why? Why is that deal stalling? Well, because, um, we've identified that there's no partnering or we've identified that partner abcd, um, in the last few months, they've dropped off because of xyz. Right. Um, or, uh, we are on. We understand that, um, the following deal is not.

Speaker A: We. We don't.

Speaker B: We cannot move it to commit. We cannot move it to likely within this quarter because the partner is telling us that XYZ is missing, which means, like, hey, do I need to bring another partner into the fold? Right? And so that's where. That's where. As a strategic advisory, um, role, that's where you have to come in and also be part of those conversations where like, hey, um, what is happening today? Why are we dropping off here and there? What, um, why are, uh, or why is this working? Right? What makes this deal or this region more successful than this other one? Um, what is making this partner manager or this ae more successful than the other one? Right? If you are buried in tactical work, if you're buried in just running reports, in just, um, adding partners, adding users to your portal, and just, um, uh, doing those kind of things. Guess what? You cannot spend your time analyzing, well, not only gathering the data, but truly analyzing the data and running the proper models periodically, daily, weekly, whatever you want, um, to basically be that. That person that people go for. Recommendations, right? That's where you want to be, where you're finding all of this. And then you can say, like, hey, I understand that your team, um, we can make them 5% or 10% more successful by bringing a call recording tool that will allow us to do XYZ feature. Right? That's where you want to be and not in the. In the other side where you just, like, buried.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. It's very much. It's almost that point where you don't want to just be measuring what success is. You want to be helping to define what does success look like and then be able to. To measure. Uh, it, um. It's a fascinating journey that you've had, because I can't help but think your experience at IBM and what you described sounds like the role you have today in the sense of what you were doing. It just wasn't within the context of an ops role. You know, you were driving transformation, you were playing with things, you were failing quickly, you were breaking everything. And in so many respects, it's like a perfect grounding to then come in and kind of almost formulize that role and what the impact of that role is in a business.

Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Uh, for the last 14, 15 years of my career, I've spent a lot of my time doing ops, even though it was not part of it. But it happens. Like, and this is maybe a commonality for a lot of partner people out there, right? That without realizing, or maybe consciously realizing it, they have to do all of these things, right? And eventually I realized, like, yeah, this is, this is where I want to move. I want to move out from maybe the more salesy side of partner leadership, partner management, into this and be an accelerator, be that catalyst for teams and be that evangelist for teams. Because this is the role and this is a kind of team that they need besides them and behind them and around them to be able to be successful.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know, I know. We're coming up, uh, we've been spending a lot of time going through this today, so I'm going to bring us on to kind of one of our, uh, our last questions here, but could it be one of our longest questions as well? Like, you know, as partner ops has evolved, you know, it's becoming something that I. That is, you know, I'm now seeing people with partner ops job titles like yourself popping up all over the place. Like, what advice would you. Would you give to companies looking to start their first partner ops team? Like, where should they focus first, um, in building out their first. First ops?

Speaker B: That's a great question. Um, selfishly, I'm gonna say you need partner ops, right? But the reality is that you can start by dedicating someone in your rev op sales ops organization to help the partner team. And I would start by doing a full audit of the partnership landscape within your organization. You're gonna find that there's a lot of things missing.

Speaker A: A lot.

Speaker B: A whole lot of things missing from. How are we capturing. Hey, like, the most important thing right now is like, I need my partner team to have the data to be able to go to my CEO, right? How are we capturing, Are we even capturing that? Right? So it might start by looking. You might start by looking at your CRM. Hey, we, uh, don't have the proper fields. We're not capturing the proper information. We don't have the proper data hygiene. Right? So it starts there. And then B is, uh, okay, what is. Who is part of our partner base? Who are most important partners? What are still our, our least active partners? And let's go and have a chat with them and let's understand what are the deficiencies. If you're a great partner, what is it truly that you truly love? And what, and what are we missing to like, keep scaling this and keep growing this? Right. And on the flip side is, if you're not a great partner, um, what, what's happening, right? Is it, is it a matter of partner experience? Is it a matter of misalignment of incentives? Is this a matter of, I just don't have the resources that I need your, your partner managers to be more active with me. You, uh, haven't truly enabled me, and I just don't know what we do together. Um, so it's, it's. I think every company is going to be different, but, but I would start internalizing it first. First, and that is go and talk to your partner team and see how much manual work and how much of their time are they spending in your CRM, in your own tools, trying to gather data in Excel spreadsheets and not out there with partners driving deals and building partnerships. And that's where you start and then you go out.

Speaker A: Interesting. So, and just to be clear on this one, because I think there's a other approach which is, would you ever find it necessary to assess things from a partner lens as well? Like, when is it time to look at things from a partner lens and look at the ways that you can improve it?

Speaker B: So obviously from the very beginning, you're going to be very, very, very, very tactical. Right? So I think you have to get your house in order first before you can actually tell somebody, like, hey, come and walk into my house. Right? I don't want you to walk into a messy house or into a house that looks like a hoarder's house. Uh, and so I think you first internalize and once you have things a little bit under control in house and you say, like, okay, we're at a good spot where I think we have decent processes, we have decent reporting, we have decent etc. Etc. That's when you can start talking to partners and saying like, okay, yes, from a partner perspective, I want to understand from the outside in, what are you seeing? You don't have resources, it's really hard to contract with you. Um, because your contract is a mess, it's too long, it's punishing, it's too one sided, et cetera. Um, from a portal perspective, your portal looks like it was built like a five year old in their learn to code classes. Built, um, takes me 25 clicks and three hours to find an asset. Like I'm looking for a battle card and I just cannot find it. Um, uh, deal registration, like every time I register a deal you still have to get on the phone with me or I just cannot find it. Your portal keeps failing. Uh, account mapping, like every month we have to spend an hour and a half doing account mapping. Right. How can we get out of this? So those are the things that then from a partner perspective you need to think about. Because again from a partner perspective, you people need to understand that there's an opportunity cost for the partner to work with you. They're. They're not doing something else.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: Right. That is a risk for them. That is opportunity cost. And so you need to make it worthwhile. It's, they have a business to run, that partner manager has KPIs and targets to hit. And guess what, if you're not, if they're not hitting with you, they're going to move on. And so you need to understand that and you need to align to that.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. It's so nice to get this perspective around the channel and to hear it because it is the competitive advantage that a business can have. It's that there's your product has to be great, you need to provide good level of support. Price point needs to be competitive in the marketplace. But beyond that it's really hard to differentiate yourself as a, as a partnering business just on those things alone.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: So the world like the opportunity to win and it's there in front of us in so many respects. Of all of the change AI lots of other opportunities is being that business that does drive that pipeline.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker C: For a partner manager that does actually. And again it comes back to it's not the shiny glittery things, it's actually just doing business really effectively and well.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker C: And ops is going to be at the heart of it. If it's not there now there's absolutely no way you can build an automated scalable business in an ecosystem that's more complicated now than it was 10 years ago without someone owning the problem. If marketing needed marketing ops and sales needed sales ops ecosystem is more complex than those two areas on their own. So how we could think we could survive without ops being at the heart of it, I don't know.

Speaker A: Absolutely, completely agree. I, uh, mean. Last question. And Antonio, so you know, you began in sales and then found your home in partner ops, right? I would definitely say the passion I've seen from you on this is. It's, um, I can't even think of the right word anymore. But it's contagious. Like, I'm excited about what the future of partner ops could be. Um, but what do you think the most important characteristics are, are to look for if you're looking to bring someone in for a part into a partner ops role? Like, what are the, what's the right parts of their Persona that you should be, uh, interviewing or, or looking to dial up, uh, in a role like that?

Speaker B: Great question. And I think you, you kind of like asked it earlier and I didn't answer it. Apologies, uh, for that. But I think one of the things that you, that you're looking for is you need a person that understands, um, process, right, that is going, that, that has a knack for getting under the hood and understanding how things work and how can, uh, how can you fix things? Fix things. And a lot of times is you need to break things to fix things. Right? That's one thing. Second thing is you need a super analytical person. Like, you need that person that is not going to just look at numbers on the, on the very surface. You need, you need to keep diving into things. Um, and that goes above, like if somebody's asking you for win rates. Yeah, go, go beyond that. Look at, uh, deal sizes, look at win rates by region, look at, look at different things around it. So, so you need a very analytical person. Um, and then the, the last thing is that for a lot of people, especially if you talk about ops to a salesperson, like their ice glaze, right? Like they're like, uh, you know, and so you need a person that has a passion for this, right? Like, not everybody is, is, is meant for this. It's just like if somebody asked me to, to read a contract, like, hey, I done it a lot of times in my career and I did a lot at IBM especially, but I'm not a lawyer, like that. That's just not my world. Right. So you need, you need the right personality, the right person that, that understands that like having a background in sales ops, um, is going to help significantly. Having a background in project management is going to help significantly. Having a background in somebody that understands how to speak sales but also speak technical. Because they're going to spend their time a lot with developers, they're going to spend their time a lot with IT teams, um, building integrations, building different things, but at the same time they're going to spend a lot of time with sales and with leadership. So you need that capability of a person that is able to translate both things. And a lot of times it's a hard thing. If you try to get a developer and a salesperson in a room and you close the door, guess what? It's not gonna go well very fast because they speak very different languages. Um, so you need a person that is able to do that. Then finally you need somebody that is truly a cross collaborator. You're going to be working through a lot of different places, a lot of different organizations. They need to be able to ask questions and ask a lot of questions to understand, um, not only how things work, but what's the North Star, what are the goals, etc. So you need a person that is able to collaborate cross, functionally, cross department in a lot of times also with different departments inside of different partners. Right? So um, if you, if you have a lone wolf, somebody that likes to work alone, etc. That's not going to be the right person for this. You, you truly need a person that

Speaker C: is across collaborator that I, I mean I, I agree with everything you've said just because it takes that uh, type of person but also that skill set as well. And, and that's not a common skill set. There's like amazing communication, charismatic analytical breaks things, loves Lego. Clearly, you know, there's a lot of qualities that we're looking for and I wonder in the future, you know, when you, when you look at roles that uh, are not easy to fill, they have a high value in a business, you know, and that's one thing that will become evident like within an ecosystem business that uh, the ops leadership role probably will be elevated beyond where it is today because it's going to be aligning all of these areas, understanding all of these areas, bringing all of those qualities. But I wonder as well whether in, you know, as education programs become more vocational, you know, and there's the academic work stream still, but you begin to see more vocational areas because they require, you know, the 10,000 hours of practice to become excellent at something. You want to start that reasonably young. So it'll be interesting as we kind of see ecosystem roles develop and mature, if they do become, you know, areas where the training in them m becomes much more formalized than it is now, where, like you said, you're looking for a type of person who's got good experience in sales ops or in project management, um, because it's a demanding role. Like a really demanding role.

Speaker B: It's a very demanding role. And, uh, and also, it doesn't come with the bells and whistles of, you know, sales ops, rev ops, partner ops. It's always a fact that, you know, you're in the deals with partners, you're help or with the sales team helping, uh, in many cases. And guess what? There's no President's Club. Right. There's. It's the unsung heroes behind the scenes.

Speaker C: Sure. Well, maybe we should. We should have a little, um, wager whether we think in the next five years we'll see the first chief partner officer that comes from the ops team. Maybe, you know, because of the effects, maybe it's a transformational role. You know, everything you've described it as understanding, like the crawl bit of know what is happening and how we do it to the. The running of. Okay, now we're advising, you know, we're providing intelligence to our colleagues to eventually the fly bit where it's like, well, now we're going to transform our business and we are the team that will do it.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yep.

Speaker C: I love it. Um, I'm coming to work with you, Antonio.

Speaker A: I think I want to create the President's club of partners as well. That's what we're going to do now. That's the end one. If you want to join the President's Club for Partnerships, uh, just, uh, drop us a line, but we'll do that. Antonio, it's been a pleasure having you on the tech marketing podcast today. And we're definitely going to have to have you back to finish off, uh, going through the framework, the rest of your framework there. But, um, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks very much.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me, John. Thank you for having me, Sebastian. Um, this was super fun.

Speaker C: Great. Absolute pleasure. Thank you, Antonio.