22 - Live: The State of Partner Engagement and Partner Portals in 2023 & Beyond - Rob Rebholz, Aaron Howerton, Paul Bird

This production is brought to you by Magentrix. Magentrix is a pioneer in platforms for partner ecosystem management and partner relationship management. All right, well, welcome everyone to the state of partner engagement and partner portals in 2023 and beyond. To kind of frame today's discussion on how this came to life over the last few weeks, this was all kind of spurned and started by Adam Pash on LinkedIn, talking about how partner portals can be an absolute mess. They're hard to navigate, you know, built from a company's point of view and was really looking for a better way. So we brought on a few experts that took part in this discussion. So I'd like to introduce our panelists today. I'm just going to stop sharing my screens here so we can see all of them. And there we go. And we'll get rid of this. All right, so we've got the three of us with you today to talk about partner engagement. First, we have Aaron Howerton. So Aaron is the Senior Channel Business Operations Architect at Atlassian. And he also hosts the Partnership Leaders Weekly Partner Ops Office Hours. He's going to tell us why partners don't want to log into your portal. And he's going to tell us why partners don't want to log into your portal. And other current challenges faced with PRMs in the market. Second, Rob Redshold. He's the CEO of SuperGlue. SuperGlue does a lot on partner enablement, partner engagement. So he's going to talk to us about how to better create partner experiences to drive portal adoption. And myself, I'm Paul Bird. I'm the Head Portal Wizard here at Magentrix and the host of the Ultimate Channel Sales Podcast. I'll be speaking on kind of the root cause behind this. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the root cause behind the lack of partner engagement with your portal and what you can do about it. Talk a little bit about what Magentrix is doing to enable partner engagement tools both inside and outside the portal. And how Magentrix has pioneered an AI-powered PRM and leading the way with kind of an AI-powered future when it comes to partner management tech. So Aaron, I want to start off with you. In fact, I'm going to share my screen again because you had this great little meme that called, caught our attention. Just bear with me. That where we are going, you no longer needed partner portals. So just let me bring this up real quick so everyone can see it. So maybe you can give us a little bit of context as far as this great meme that you had as far as, you know, hey, I remember this movie from the '80s. But maybe you can share with us a little bit more about where you were going there. Yeah, so a little bit of context. I met Adam. Several weeks ago, we got connected on a one-to-one and I've been seeing his content. And then he made his post and I just responded. That was the first thing that came to my mind with his response. Because in the middle of all this, in the middle of what I do full-time, I'm constantly thinking and one of the things that I want to see happen is easier access for partners, right? How do we help partners where they're at without forcing them to always come to us? And so I just kind of thought of it as like portals can get in the way. When you look at where things are trending right now, partners have more partners than ever, right? We want to see more partners and they work with more companies than ever. And all those partners have to go into different portals to do this. And so if we can do anything to keep a partner from having to come to us and go to where they're at, we're making it easier to experience. So I had made a comment in his thread and he basically told me, like, if you don't post a meme about this tomorrow, I'm going to steal it and take it as my own. So he threw the gauntlet down and I had to respond. And it definitely blew up a lot more than I expected for what it was, right? Like that was a throwaway LinkedIn post. It became something much larger to me, but it's really driven by the idea that partners need a better experience. And if you look at the current portals, there's a bit of a challenge, right? Portals large, largely, I'd say this, not all portals are driven by the old reseller models, reseller referral models with a lot of marketing engines. There's a lot of this need to track MDF and all these older pieces. But current portals, current technology trends are showing deeper technology alliances, strategic alliances, solution partners. So we have a much. Broader depth of partnership types in the marketplace tonight that are not generally well across all portals with what they would call with with base features. Now, I also don't want to blame all the portal vendors, right? Let's be very clear that buyers go to the market because they have a specific need. A lot of times that need is deal reg, not a big surprise. Well, we got to give something to our team. They got to be able to submit a lead, got to get a form in. And so they go out and they buy a portal without a portal strategy, right? They buy the portal to get deal regs, to get opportunity dashboard, and we leave all these other features on the table, which can be asset management, co-branding, MDF management, calendars and events, scheduling, all that stuff can easily live dormant if you don't have a consolidated strategy. So I think it's twofold. I think historically you're looking at platforms that were built for a different type of partnership that are hustling right now, I think, to get caught up, add new features and kind of get in the mix, but also buyers who have not always been strategic about what it means to have partnerships as a consolidated ecosystem. And so I think historically you're looking at platforms that were built for a different type of partnership that are hustling right now, I think, to get caught up, add new features and kind of get in the mix, but also buyers who have not always been strategic about what it means to have partnerships as a consolidated ecosystem. previous life when i actually built a partner ecosystem like i had to yeah work with a bunch of companies that all forced me into their portals and yeah i usually wasn't too excited um at the same time that just like aaron said right like it's i think there's no way around portals we just have to rethink the way um we use them um i think there is there are use cases but first of all we need to understand that they're not a silver bullet we're not going to implement and i've seen i've talked to too many people like i'm going to implement a prm and everything is good then i can scale um they're probably not the first thing you're going to implement anymore and they are becoming one part of your partner tech stack right there are all of these additional solutions that are on the rise look at account mapping tools etc so it's no longer like you implement this one poor the prm this is one size fits all or this one-stop shop solution and then you're good um i think what's also changing is and i think this is kind of also what you hinted aaron is i think in the past very often we implemented a prm because we're like oh it's going to make our life easier as partnership teams right i'm going to implement the prm and then my partners are going to take care of themselves uh i'm going to be more productive i can deal with more partners etc i think the reasoning i think it's shifting right now we need to think more about how the prm can be part of the broader partner experience um that helps us drive revenue um so it's no longer i have a one-off call with a new partner i send them a very long email i send them give them access to the prm and i'm like you're on your own it's more about um seeing the prm um as part of a broader kind of an important element of the broader partner life cycle and i probably need to think about um by the way also integrating the prm better with my other systems and creating this experience where i um i interact with partners i generate touch points outside the portal and at the right time i tell them now you should go to the portal now the portal is going to help you do your job now the port is going to give you transparency now the port is going to enable you um and i think that we're going to see more adoption so um you know i don't think anybody that says portals are dead i think is probably wrong i think that but i do think that we need to we need to if we change the the strategy of how we use them we can actually we can drive the value of portals um so that's that's kind of my take on this and yeah so i guess the good news for everyone that has invested in prm and all the prm vendors that are on the market today that yes partner portals are still relevant and i think in the current state and we look at other contributors to the thread like jay maine and mike lee um you know currently there's just no way around it we don't have another method and we need them for that channel capability channel credibility right that we have a an where they can self-serve, you know, that centralization and security of shared channel resources, you know, from an ops perspective, Aaron, you think about data integrity and consistency for those, you know, deal and referral management, and then kind of the automation of tasks that would typically done manually, like creating users, onboarding, much, much more. And until there's really a disruption, when it comes to the, you know, tech involved, and the way that we share information, that it looks like it's going to be relevant for the future. But I also wanted to address one misconception about the usefulness of PRMs. You know, in particular, there were a couple of comments that talked about PRMs really being, you know, kind of point solutions, that type of thing. And there are a number of solutions. That basically solve one task in the channel strategy. But that really doesn't apply to the Magentrics platform, because we're really a platform as a service, as opposed to software as a service. And the benefits of having a platform is that you have the flexibility to be able to address the needs of ecosystems, channel programs of all different flavors, address different strategies for engagement. And then if the. Out of the box functionality doesn't meet your needs as far as your channel program, then you can alter this platform to be able to meet the needs if, like I say, the out of the box features don't don't meet your needs, but the misconception here is that, and you touched on it, Rob, that PRMs partner portals partner ecosystem platforms that they're a magic bullet, they're not, it's a tool, it's a tool like a hammer, and it's not the nail, and it's not the one swing, but it's the tool that's going to make it work. And it's not the nail, and it's not the one swing, but it's the tool that's going to make it work. is to interact with your organization, not only will they appreciate the experience, but it will also translate into a higher level of trust in your brand with that partner. And, you know, that whole PX, that whole partner experience, it really has to be delivered consistently through all touch points, not just the little touch points, like you mentioned, as far as logging in and, you know, registering a deal, but through all aspects of that partner ecosystem, that partner portal. And, you know, that partner engagement when isn't generally a problem with PRMs, but if a vendor hasn't configured their portal correctly, and they're getting poor results, it's usually probably from a poor experience. But there is a, fortunately, there is a solution to the problem. And it really involves kind of a three-pronged approach, if you will. If you want to kind of drive this partner experience. The first one, make sure your partner program doesn't suck. It's got to be attractive. It's got to be value. It's got to meet the expectations of the partner. Second is to make sure you've got a capable PRM. And part three is really to take the time and effort to set up a positive partner experience. And I think once you kind of deliver that truly kind of pleasant partner experience, the kind that actually Ben Wright was also on the thread where he mentioned on LinkedIn to ensure the PRM has all three of those elements, you know, they want to make sure that platform's got all the out of the box functionality, you know, have all the features and capabilities to help you today, but also in the future, but then can also adapt to your future needs, which you probably don't know. If you talk about strategy, Aaron, you know, we don't know what we don't know, and we don't know what's going to happen in the future. So you're going to want to make sure that you have all the out of the box functionality, you know, have all the features and capabilities to help you today, but also in the future, but then can also adapt to your future needs, which you probably don't know. So you're going to want to make sure you align yourself with a vendor that's going to be able to meet you and help you out in the future. And that really comes back to the original point of this, which is to service partners, not only inside the portal, but outside the portal as well. So, you know, from our perspective, you know, as soon as you have the right partner tech in place, it's not the only job you have to do. Now you really need to set it up. I had said, look, partner portals are like a good joke. If you have to explain them, they're not very good. So being able to go through and make sure that the navigation, the experience is really as intuitive as breathing, you know, make sure that it is really geared towards personalization. I think what you'll see is the level of engagement from partners, both inside the portal and outside the portal is going to really change, but it's the overall experience that you're delivering them. So, Rob, you know, we brought you aboard here because, you know, you have the background from a partner engagement perspective, and there was a comment, one of your comments, let me bring this up here, just let me share my screen again. So, Rob, you know, we brought you aboard here because, you know, you have the background from a partner engagement perspective, and there was a comment, one of your comments, let me share my screen again. And Adam asked about this, so I'll just pass over and we'll get this one right here. All right. So, Will Taylor had said that he can't remember a time where he had a -- got what he needed from a partner portal. Adam, who started this whole thing off, said, you know, that there was so much friction between partner teams, and you come back with the sunglasses emoji. All right. the most compelling topic that a lot of people deal with. Again, I deal with hundreds of companies every year when it comes to their partner program strategy. Number one thing, number one challenge that I hear is partner engagement. And that is, that's a, that's, it's part of the overall relationship with partners. And, you know, from my perspective, before joining Magentrix, I spent half my time working in the channel, half my time managing channel. But if I think about partner experience and a lot of the challenges that people have today, I go back to my first introduction to channel. I was working for a reselling company in Toronto that resold hardware, software all around the globe. But one of the platforms we sold, a platform that kind of software company of New Jersey, client server, the old way of doing things, and what was interesting is that we did so well selling this software that we acquired the company, we acquired the vendor. So we went from reseller to vendor in about three years. Great story. But what happened overnight is I inherited a channel and I had always been in direct sales before. So what does somebody in direct sales do? They pick up the phone and start calling all these people in the channel because they're going to do business with me, even though I don't know these people. really found out really quickly was that they didn't like this company. A lot of the channel partners didn't like doing business with them. They were hard to do business with. Their support was terrible. So we're trying to now get some return on this investment, this company we acquired. So I did what my natural direct sales route said, get in the car. And I drove between Boston and Miami over the span of three weeks. My wife wasn't very happy with me that I was gone for three weeks. But I visited 55, 56 channel partners between Massachusetts and Florida. And I sat in their office because I wanted to understand. I wanted to understand what their business was. And I wanted to understand where we as a company fit. And I came out of that three weeks with really a first a better understanding of my channel, but then also a better understanding of where I was helping their business. And that really transformed the relationship. First of all, we were offering better support. We were offering, you know, more marketing literature, we were actually being really aggressive in the in with marketing and sending leads to people. But then our approach changed as well, where, you know, we would take inbound leads, we were a channel only company at that point, and we would distribute them out to our partners. But now understanding that, look, I'm not going to send the manufacturing company lead to the person that specializes in insurance, or somebody that does phone systems, I'm not going to send them the insurance client, just because they're in the same territory. This helped me better understand the channel. And it also helped me grow the channel. Because what I would do if they didn't have, there wasn't somebody that really fit the mold, I'd ask them, I'd say, who do you buy hardware, software services from? And I would pick up the phone, I would call that, that company, and I would basically introduce, say, you know, I want to return one of the sheep to the flock here. And would you be interested in joining the our channel program? Worked out really well. But the greatest success story is that we did it to CDW so many times, they became our biggest channel partner. We were a small company, we weren't even listed. But eventually, we returned enough to them that we got a special invite to their data lab. So we could get listed. And then floor walks with 2500 people in Chicago. I mean, it just they blew up when it came to our channel installation base. So, you know, I think that when we look at it, that is kind of the, the approach that I've always taken to channel engagement. Now, Aaron, you're on the upside. So from your perspective, how do you look at how do you enable the partner team to be better engaged? about that but before we get off that story I want to highlight one thing about that because that was how long ago that was 20 years ago yeah so I'm not trying to I'm not trying to date you what I want to establish is that the foundations of a solid partner program of solid ecosystem development they haven't changed in 20 years it's relationships built on value built on this concept of experience partner experience is not a new idea it just doesn't get talked about enough when I talk about operations by and large I tell people all the time I don't like to do operations I don't know many people in operations that relish logging into every day to manage a task list or to do manual transitions on data they do it because it helps other people achieve their goals we do it because we like to help people and in my case I like to drive a positive experience for partnerships across the board so what you've just validated for us is that all the ideas that we need to build successful programs a successful engagement haven't changed right we have different tech now that's really the question we're talking about today is what tech and how does tech fit into that strategy uh to the metaphor earlier about a hammer and I do a lot of remodeling I built the office that I'm standing in now I'm in the middle of rebuilding my bathroom I can use a hammer to get a lot of jobs done but when I get the right tool jobs become so much easier right taking out drywall is way better with a sawzall than with a hammer any day of the week so it's about learning the tech stack and what's out there um now circling back to your questions how do you enable people internally that's a big challenge right to me partner engagement internally is all about education there's a cultural aspect so I think it depends on where you're at company And I just got off the call this morning like I said, I mentioned I host office hours for partnership leaders. It's a members-only event. So if you're not in the leaders, you can't join, but I encourage you to sign up. We talked about this morning. We talked about this specifically, that if you're in an early stage company, begin building out the architectural pieces to track this work in your core systems. You won't have a PRM. You won't have partner tech, but you need to get the sales team engaged in those deals. So build out whatever you need to get going and do it early if you're coming in, right? So that enablement, I'd say engagement there looks different. Now, one tool, I'll highlight this too. I have no relationship with the company, but I use it very effectively before, is Speckit, which gives you an overlay into Salesforce in particular. Is that me? Sorry about that. It gives you an overlay into Salesforce in particular. So the ability to come into a partner account, for example, your CRM is going to be rigid. It's going to have, here's your fields and here's your sections. How do you create more engaging content? Something like a Speckit where you can put an overlay in, build out a rich tech experience, I was able to link in the better together stories, the technical integration notes, SPF notes, links to the partner website, links to the partner account managers, links to their account over in Salesforce, all based around those overlap widgets you're seeing pop up now. So I think it's about recognizing to your point, the fact that you do need to do internal enablement, that you do need to increase visibility. And once again, it's going to be what Rob's going to say is that you need to bring that content to where people are, as opposed to saying, hey, well, here's the partner account. Do me a favor, get the training over here and now go to the product and look at the integration documentation. No, let's bring all that together for the externals and the internals to make sure that they have what they need, where they're at. Rob, welcome back. Welcome back, Rob. There we go. You're muted. But we can't hear you this time. But to set the stage while you are bringing yourself off mute, here was the comment, right? Will Taylor asking about saying that he doesn't know the last time he went into a partner portal to get what he need. Adam agrees with him. And you come in with the sunglasses emoji. So we need a little bit of clarification on this because I know Adam was reading into it and we were reading into it as well. Yeah. So yeah, first of all, sorry, I was like kicked off the call and I didn't try to run away, you know, from the discussion. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I think the world is changing. I think there are, I think the world is changing. I think the world is changing. And I'm biased, obviously, because we're building a partner engagement automation platform. And we think about, you know, a lot of these challenges with a bit more of a greenfield approach, because we don't, you know, we're an early stage company, right? And we can kind of rethink how things are done. Which again, doesn't mean that I don't believe portals aren't essential part of many partner programs. I say many, because there are plenty of them. There are plenty of them. There are plenty of partner programs where implementing a portal doesn't make sense, just like implementing superglue doesn't make sense, by the way. It's just, I think, we just got to be honest when we talk about these things. But I mean, the way that I think about it, or that we think about it, we think about, you know, how, obviously, how we can improve productivity for partnership teams. And, you know, I think, to some extent, what we do, at superglue, and the way we think about, there is certain content that is currently in a portal, and however well you present it in a portal, it isn't going to be appealing. So maybe you can bring it to other channels. And that doesn't mean that you're eliminating the need for a portal, it means that you actually, you bring it to other channels, like email, and you actually send these messages from, you know, partner managers, Gmail accounts, and that could create pull into the portal. So that's, that's what we think about the, you know, the, the sunglass, obviously, we're also thinking a lot about AI and how we can use AI to, you know, do some of the work for partnership managers and pre drafts, or messaging for them and provide it to them. So they don't need to do all of this stuff manually, etc. I just, I just really like the space, you know. But I'm having a lot of discussions around how, you know, how I can change the game. And I think the big, the big kind of opportunity in partnerships, the team partnerships is that we're still so ridiculous, to give a very honest partnership teams compared to sales and customer success teams are still very unproductive, which doesn't mean that people aren't very hardworking, they're just extremely dedicated, etc. We just lack the tools to do a better job, right? A salesperson that doesn't use outreach or sales loft is just not going to be as productive as it could be. Same for customer success people and partnerships also often it just that stuff doesn't exist. So, you know, it's just, you know, we're still kind of with a Gmail template somewhere, and this and that it's just too much. It's too chaotic. So we're going to start Q&A in about 10 minutes. But what I want to do is address a lot of the comments that came through on this post started by Adam. So first, we'll start with Ben Wright, from he's the founder at PartnerFuel. You know, he had mentioned that it was a good post that he was working on. And he had said that, you know, we're going to start with you. And he had said that the best portals are the ones that create customized experiences we've been talking about today for each partner level. And for example, if he's a channel partner needs something different in terms of training enablement, that we can serve that partnerships aren't one size that that fits all. And I think that we would all agree that there is no one size fits all approach to this, is that this is really about creating that partner experience, that they need it the most. Do you also concur, Aaron, I agree with you on that. Yeah, I think you know, I like what he I like that he mentions partner type because this goes back to what we're saying earlier, right, the proliferation of partner programs and what it means to be a partner has changed over the past 20 years from what it used to be in terms of strictly reseller strictly channel like and then when I in conversations, typically when I hear channel, because of my experience and my story, I usually relate that to resellers heavily. I think that's pretty common translation, but then have to be honest, because all of it is different channels of Avenue and Rob keeps pulling us back to revenue, which I like, ops can forget about revenue, because we're too busy with the process. But when he talks about there, and when Ben talks about partner types, that's the difference. Every single program is going to have different operational needs. Some of those overlap with other programs. So your referrals, they need deal reg, right, your resellers need deal reg, but they might also need deal reg plus quoting support plus approvals, plus co selling, as opposed to your solution partners, we need to see your project and be able to report on status and maybe give you satisfaction ratings versus technology project to are doing API documentation with a partner group with a product group, right? Like, that's still green territory for technology and improvement. How do we enable product teams to collaborate cross functionally between organizations securely safely on the same API? To his point, everybody is something different. Getting a one stop shop for all that is difficult without a realistic strategy and not entirely impossible. So and Mike Lee has says that, you know, partners are a necessary part of portals are necessary to exchange information, we can't get around that this is something we know. But maybe making that manual interface is a little antiquated. Again, talking to the partner experience that we've been coming today. But it nice says something that ultimately the portal is a reflection of your architecture and how everything fits together. The importance of strategy, we covered this today as well, and the variance across programs. And that is, you know, how do we make this work, you know, why can't we make this plug and play? So Rob, if you think about your strength, you know, channel engagement strategy, enablement strategy, how do you turn this into a plug and play experience so we can get Mike signed up? He's looks like he's ready to go. Yeah. I think overall, the way very often when you think about portals and the way we set up portals and the way that maybe a lot of portals were built, and I think this is this is it takes months to get this stuff up and running. And then it takes even more time to kind of optimize it, etc. And I think that is that isn't that is part of the frustration is the frustration for partnership teams implementing the portal initially, because it just takes a lot longer than expected. And then there's frustration with the people who are sent onto the portal, which is like half ready, it's like. And so that I like the idea of plug and play, plug and play. I mean, that's, that's something that I think about every day when we in the work that we do, right. And if we're very honest, it's not, it shouldn't be that difficult to provide plug and play solutions. Because when I have a marketing background, I built market tech market matic before for for super fluent, it was so incredibly complex, because everybody had different data sources, that so many data sources, so many different data structures, like, there's so it was so complex that it made sense that an implementation of marketing automation solution takes forever. But I think if we are very honest in partnerships, and I've, you know, I've interviewed hundreds of people in last year, data structures are pretty consistent, not talking about the big enterprise organizations where it's like super custom, but the average mid sized partner organization is a usually they all have very, very, very similar data structures, which is what should put us as partner tech providers in a situation where we provide solutions that don't require all this customization etc etc etc and increase the time to value for our users perfect so we'll go through a couple of other comments here Jay McBain you know he mentions that he built a company purely around the concept of partner engagement not logging into the portal I believe this was on your comment Aaron they raised millions of dollars the experience failed but portals protect that confidential information tools away from your competitors so that you've got a level of security and protection so I'm sure Aaron in all of the environments that that you've worked with that making sure that you protect information you don't want in the public domain has been critical to to your configurations your support of partner teams well we lost a little bit of your audio there Aaron so I'm here I had me there we go sure I didn't interrupt Rob because I kept wanting to say yes I agree Rob I agree when it comes to this like I and I've got a task on calendar to follow up with Jay he's open to me to ask him questions about this and I really want you because I want to understand the timing in the place in the current ecosystem things are changing right in terms of think about a cap account mapping another thing that people have been doing for two three decades sales reps meeting up sharing account list privately bring out Excel insecurely now we have tools we have platforms that allow us to share that data securely that's getting sign off from legal and compliance info security so we're starting to see I think a pipeline open where maybe maybe in the current state with the current approvals and the trending of things even with restrictions like GDPR we have an opening to start to experiment more with what it means to go system to system or between partnerships or to share information because we're building it into the front end of our agreements we have a shared understanding or informing our customers about what's happening and we're developing a higher tolerance with increased security to kind of get these things done to that point it's absolutely critical right Rob to your point you mentioned a minute ago you talked about Martech and sales cloud this is why PRM is such a challenge or portals are such a challenge because I don't want to put it in for deal reg but when you talk to partner ops guess who I have to talk to to make the deal reg happen I have to talk to legal I have to talk to marketing for sales alignment I've got to talk to the sales team to make sure I'm not messing with the CRM I've got to talk to the partners themselves I've got to talk to the partnership team we have to talk to leadership you have to talk to bi analytics that's just to get deal regs running like that's a huge cross-functional role where partner ops often gets undersold for what it has to do it's not that it's this larger broader focus all that to say I think yeah it's a definitely component of everything that we do who owns the data where does the data live what do we share with you and that's where that experience piece starts to matter because if you don't think that ahead through that ahead of time and you're under selling the cost of enablement proper enablement and proper education and Rob I like what you're talking about right with superglue because you're saying you know it's kind of like it's kind of like a marketing engine just for your partnership team let's drop some drips out there let's get the partners engaged and let's kind of trickle them back into the portal just like we would a customer to the website yeah I by the way and I think like this this privacy argument is a dangerous one sometimes like I'm as you can tell from my accent I'm German so the big problem I have whenever I go back to Germany with everything that is you know bigger companies to privacy is very often an excuse not to think about new ways to attract if you know people are like oh this we have to maintain privacy that's why we force you into this platform and this is why the process works this way in that way etc and I think it's very often what it leads to is like if we over emphasize privacy we keep everything confidential we have 17 barriers here and there what it leads to is that a people don't like find workarounds that are even less secure and that's the reality not they're like I don't know how this stuff works and then they just share the stuff via other channels it's just a reality and all we just have no adoption people like you know what this is just too much not worth it so I think I think that's I'm totally with you certain content needs to be in a kind of dedicated space etc to keep it secure but sometimes we overdo it and we use again I see it but if I go back to Europe privacy is a great excuse to not change a process and have bad experiences that leads to frustration and bad outcomes so I think we need to find that barrier and I think it's already changing like in the past oh we can't do account we can share you know our data we can't do account mapping what did people do they share the entire customer list via CSV so account mapping is taking place it's just and then you know we've taken that step with cross beam and reveal etc on these tools and all of a sudden we we found another way to do this stuff we at first sight would I notice we're sharing confidential data but but really it is more secure because we are just we're no longer ignoring the realities of what's happening around us I want to say that you and a in a couple minutes so if anyone that has questions if we could start adding these questions to the the GoToWebinar interface I just want to finish up with one last piece which is you know this whole comment from Jesse Jesse Shipman saying you know that your processes and procedures tools make all the difference we talked about that from a partner experience today but then the last part is the important one that curiosity and empathy is really key so that's more the human element my sales career one of the best things I ever learned somebody taught me this when I was in my mid-twenties they told me look you have two ears you have one mouth you should use them in proportion so I think absolutely that curiosity and empathy goes a long way so let's let's get to some questions we've had some people that have been listening to us today so just let me stop sharing my screen away you should all of these people Jesse Ben everybody we just we just mentioned they were great people to follow perfect all right so we do have some questions here all right there's a question for you Aaron I see that yeah and that's from Aaron Olson if you don't know Aaron he is over at partner hacker wrangling all of us contributors that do all the do a lot of writing and engagement over there he's doing about the best book on partner ops and and I'll be honest I think if you look for content or or structured anything dedicated to partner ops you won't find it that way you've actually got to look into programmatic books that are like where that stuff is kind of embedded into what you're doing with that now to that end partner hacker does have a really good resource that they just released I have it sitting right over here on a shelf and I'm also reading the 180 days to the partner success by Matt Bray it's a summary of the title that's from a few years ago so I would say there's definitely more people writing about the space I'm trying to consolidate that some of my network but maybe Aaron that's a good opportunity for some content to be created by somebody yeah Mark Brickman over at partner nomics has been doing quite a bit now that's more on the overall partner strategy of multiple different flavors of approach but here's a question for you Rob as far as how do you measure the success of your partner engagement efforts within your partner portal that's a great question oh you're on mute again sorry I'm struggling with tech the I would come back to like my previous point I wouldn't say you need to measure you know success in the portal you just need to how do you measure success and ultimately it's I think we should put a lot more emphasize on like time to value for partners you know time average time to you know to partner submitting the first lead the share of partners where it should drive revenue etc and then we need to see like what are the leading indicators that are linked to the to the portal that that help us achieve that goal and probably portal organs aren't necessarily they can be one of these leading indicators but very often they're not because it can be good that can be cake games that KPI but yeah basic coming coming from revenue and going back think about the part experience and I think we need to talk more to our partners and truly ask them like how happy they're like nobody's ever asked you whether I like their portal change what I'm missing nobody's asking these questions and I think we should absolutely agree and I think you know different stakeholders are gonna have different measurements for success and I think you know different stakeholders are gonna have different measurements for success you know the the CFO the CRO they're gonna look what is the bottom line look like and how much of that was partner generated and you know I've worked with a company that that uses the magentrix platform they pushed over a hundred million in ARR through that partner Channel last year and they expect to increase that by 20 this year you know the CRO and the CRF CFO are going to be really happy with those numbers but I can tell you that the the marketing team their measurements are different this is here's this content here's how we fit in this market here's where we win here's why we win and here's all the partners that I'm going to enable so they can beat the competition in the field and they're having a great time with it so a question for you Aaron you know how do you balance providing partners with the resources they need to succeed while protecting your intellectual property at the same time so how what what's your thought what's your approach to that legal legal legal legal that's the legal team um no really there there's a real push right we're in this weird sense of i've got proprietary information knowledge about my product and my program but also we live in a time of open access right where information should be freely available i come from you know i previously worked at six cents uh they got a whole book uh their marketing leader right there about no cold calls no spam no forms no gates right open up the door and get people access so my personal values around this may differ a bit from the companies that i worked for like at last scene at last scene though has a no b a it's a part of our core value set so transparency there's a lot of uh differentiating between transparency and openness which i think is interesting and challenging uh when it comes to the system though i generally believe more is better share as much as you can trust your partners until they give you a reason not to trust them just like i would with any relationship um and when they violate that right again that's where you have good legal team good programs great here's the trust we're going to bake it into the contract and when you violate that you can be gone we need to gate our program and actually maintain this darren bibby wrote a really good post about this this morning that um i take him for granted the idea that yeah we're a lot of talk about partnerships part partner partner but hey also you can't just partner with everybody there needs to be a lot of trust and needs to be strategy and intentionality there are times when partnerships don't make sense there are times when partnerships will hurt you and you need to be salient to that i think this comes back to that question balancing the need of what do you need to be able to do to execute well and then how can we go in my opinion back to excellent experience rob you said an awesome experience is i think i love that language how do i go here's the bare minimum i want to go past that 10 to 20 so that you start to feel that you're being trusted not all of it i can't tell you everything but i want to do a little more than i need to or should at some times and i want to do a little more to build that relationship value and it's such a big opportunity and i think that's that's the the beauty right it kind of feels like the early days of crm when the first company started to introduce marketing automation tools hyper personalization etc uh or when the first people in sales when first people started using sales engagement tools sequencing etc uh before it started becomes family um and i think that's the opportunity right now right like there aren't a lot of companies that leverage the the the tools and possibilities and don't focus people could focus a lot more on the partner experience and that's going to give you an edge i think a lot of partnerships um are not the most successful partners aren't necessarily the ones with the best solutions uh with the most attractive and high-end solutions it's those that are trusted they've got relationships they you know they make things easy for their partners etc and uh i saw that in my previous company with a direct mail automation that's like probably one of the most unsexy things out there right it's so old school uh well it's very important it's like we did but some extent um we were more available we were just more proactive etc and that's what what helped us be successful and i think that's that's where this needs to go this is what partner experience is about um everything you mentioned events etc so we got a question from clark wright here about he's asking uh what advice uh would you give in crafting a strategy around serving uh different partner types across multimedia he's thinking about using a partner portal uh to drive activity around certification for service partners and more of a youtube like drip experience for uh co-selling partners and you know what are some of the things he should be thinking about around strategy and success metrics uh so rob let me give you a stab at that one and then i've got a couple thoughts as well i think comes back to uh first of all the the types of partners but then also the personas within the partner organizations and just being very honest to yourself what these people want uh if i want to enable nae within a big tech platform they're probably not going to log into my portal i might send them a youtube video and they're more likely to watch that or a loom i'm like hey i recorded this stuff for you for you and it's going to show you we're going to give you three minutes many many certification etc um so it's come comes down to like truly looking at what what people want what what channels they prefer and and then crafting that experience around it which doesn't always mean that you always have to do what they prefer that's there's also by the way important to say like sometimes you're just gonna be like yeah but this is the process um but yeah it's i i think it's uh it's again coming coming back to the audience that you're trying to serve and not think about like what makes your life easier now i'd agree and clark the way i would look at it is you know you you already know the expected outcomes but you know when it comes to how you want to craft the strategy let's first start by identifying when you look at these kind of different partner types that you would be engaging with let's define an ideal partner profile what does it look like you know what is that individual what does that company look like and how are they going to achieve your uh your goals so how do you do that well first of all do they have the resources right is their focus and your focus in alignment are they a capable partner right do they have stability are they going to be with you for a long term or is this going to be a big investment in partner ownership onboarding partner enablement partner education with no return right so the first thing you want to do i identify that ideal partner profile we call it the icp when we're doing direct sales but it really it is a an i pp ideal partner profile that you want to be able to complete so then when you look at you know the way that you're engaging with them this is going to be really based on the understanding that you have of these partners so you can start to understand you know how do you want to how do you interact how do you learn the best and is that through you know this youtube kind of uh small easy to consume bits of content is this more live interactive is this self-guided and and your your the choice of your prm should be able to support all of these different engagement models so then the end how are you going to track success well what does success mean to you is success revenue is a success you know market domination is success look i've broken into a new market where i didn't have any partners before i have returned results and started to see roi within let's say you know 180 days whatever your timeline is for and right uh for that but again you should be able to track all of the metrics that that you're determining don't don't need to be able to see all the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining and you don't need to be able to see all of the metrics you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're determining don't need to be able to see all of the metrics that you're what you do. Let a friend that isn't even in the industry, create them an account and let them come in and say, okay, find this. And if they look at you and their jaw drops and they're like, I have no idea what I'm doing here, then you know you've got some work to do on your partner experience. Aaron, what about you? What are your thoughts on this? I love that. I love the question and I love your approach. At the end of the day, I think it comes back to recognizing that your partner experience is driven by operations, sales, really good enablement team. You mentioned J.C. Shipman. She's a gold rock star in this space. She knows what she's talking about and she would say all day long, right? It's also web design, right? Think about what it's like to land on a website. Do you know what you're doing? Do you know where to go to take action? I love that idea. That's all I would say is enhance it by recognizing the scope of people you're going to need to pull that off. That's going to be reflective of the investment you're going to have to make to create an excellent partner experience for your partners. It's going to keep them coming back just like any other business. Perfect. I know we're right at time here. If there were any questions that came in that we weren't able to answer, we will make sure that we follow up by email and get all of those answered. If you do have questions for us, but you'd like to reach out to us personally, you can copy our email addresses here, take a screenshot of those or whatever you'd like. I want to thank Rob and Aaron for being with us today and everyone that joined the call today. It's been a great conversation. Truly enjoyed it. I'll say I have to do the shameless plug because this was brought to you by Magentrix. As usual, it's not magic, it's Magentrix. Thank you very much, everyone. Have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thanks for having us. This production. Thank you.