199 – Unlocking the Future of Partnerships: Celebrating 199 Episodes with Industry Friends

Two Fellow Podcasters Join Ultimate Partner®

There are moments in one’s journey that are marked not just by the miles covered but by the company kept. As we herald the 199th Episode of Ultimate Partner, I’m honored to be joined by two industry experts and fellow podcasters, Rob Spee is SVP of Channels and Alliances at Beyond Trust and the host of the Channel Journey’s Podcast. Paul Byrd, Portal Wizard at Magentrix and host of the Ultimate Channel Sales Podcast. Their insights into the world of partners, ecosystems, and channel sales are invaluable and our shared dedication to fostering successful partnerships and our passion for podcasting brings a unique blend of expertise, camaraderie, and vision to this discussion. As we reminisce, debate, and predict the future of partnerships, I invite you to be a part of this monumental episode. Dive in and join the conversation.

What You’ll Learn?

1. Partnerships and ecosystems with industry experts.0:00
2. Leadership, channel marketing, and the role of the chief partner officer.3:20
3. Ecosystem attribution and channel alignment.9:00
4. Partner Marketing Strategies and AI Adoption 15:53
5. Generative AI and its potential impact on work.19:39
6. Podcasting origins and optimizing for success in 2024.24:37
7. Tech industry trends and predictions for 2024.29:54

Unveiling Ultimate Partner LIVE—Dallas, TX, Nov 13-15, 2023

Ready to decode Microsoft’s recent game-changing investments in #Marketplace, #SMC, and #GenerativeAI?

Are you looking for actionable insights and a success roadmap?

Are you looking to network and have bi-directional engagement with Microsoft Executives, SMC sellers, GPS and Marketplace Leaders, and other Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program partners?

Your solution has arrived: Ultimate Partner LIVE – The Americas Summit.

Ultimate Partner LIVE – The Americas Summit

I’m beyond excited to launch our first LIVE event. Consider this the “double-click” from Microsoft’s Inspire Conference to provide the prescriptive guidance and executive engagement to align, leverage, and scale your Microsoft Partnership.

This is a one-of-a-kind, unique event that will help you crack the code.

Ultimate Partner LIVE| Americas 2023 

Why Attend?

🎯 Are you geared up to exploit the $50B Marketplace opportunity? Do you have a Marketplace Transactable Offer, not just built but with effective marketing and sell-through support?

💼 Have you designed an impactful co-selling plan for Small, Medium, and Corporate Accounts – SMC? Are you even sure where to start?

🤖 And let’s not overlook the game-changing potential of Generative AI, especially with innovations like Co-Pilot.

Join Us in Dallas – November 13th to 15th

Graciously hosted by Microsoft at the Las Colinas Campus, this event is designed with mainstage keynotes, breakout sessions, and individual boardroom sessions.

The event will begin with registration and a social at 4 PM on November 13th, hosted by SMC Leadership. On November 14th and 15th you’ll experience:

• Deep-dive sessions that build on insights from Microsoft’s Inspire Conference.
• A unique assembly of 300+ participants, including Microsoft executives from GPS, SMC, and Marketplace.
• A confluence of industry experts offering prescriptive guidance through real-world experiences, frameworks, and best practices.

Interactive Experience:

• Bidirectional keynotes
• Hands-on workshops
• Breakout and boardroom sessions

Networking:

• Connect with Microsoft Executives, SMC Leaders, GPS, and Marketplace Experts.
• Meet some of the SMC Field Organization looking to engage with partners.
• Engage with award-winning partners: ISVs, SIs, LSPs, and CSPs.

Walk away from these two days ready to implement your 2024 partner plan!

How do I sign up?

Limited Early Bird Pricing is now available. You can secure your seat today for what promises to be a transformative experience. https://cvent.me/8DN9bP?RefId=Company+Website

I look forward to hosting you and seeing you in Dallas, TX, November 13-15!

Vince Menzione

Why Ultimate Partner?

Over six years ago, I embarked on a mission to empower partners struggling to navigate the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Ultimate Partner, an extraordinary media, events, and advisory company dedicated to transforming your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering Ecosystem Led Growth.

Having witnessed the industry from multiple perspectives – leading a $4.6 billion Ecosystem at Microsoft, spearheading partnerships for a billion-dollar company, and hosting 200 episodes of the Ultimate Partner®, I’ve gained invaluable insights and crafted a manifesto of principles to guide your success.

In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead.

Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?”

If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace Ecosystem Led Growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise.

A Word from AG1

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partner, ecosystem, channel, podcast, rob, event, year, role, great, ai, gbt, c suite, attribution, market, marketing, organizations, cro, ag, team, ultimate guide

SPEAKERS

Vince Menzione, Rob Spee, Announcer, Paul Bird

Vince Menzione  00:00

Today, I’m joined by two industry friends, and fellow podcasters, who came to help me celebrate episode 199 and discuss the future of partnerships. Let’s go.

Announcer  00:13

This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast Vince Menzione. A proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione  00:33

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will rob speed leads channels and alliances at beyond trust. And as the host of the channel journeys podcast, and Paul Byrd, a portal wizard at magenta bricks, and the host of the ultimate channel’s sales podcast. Join us to discuss the trends and topics in our world of partners and ecosystems. And as we celebrate Ultimate Partner is the latest milestone. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed spending time with Paul and Rob. Welcome to Ultimate Partner. I’m so excited to welcome my two friends. Rob’s be the Senior Vice President of Global channels and alliances beyond trust. And Paul Byrd portal wizard ball wizard title. And so host of a famous podcast the ultimate Channel Sales podcast. So great to have my two friends here with me today. So great to see you both today.

Paul Bird  01:42

Great to be on your channel. I’ve done Rob’s and now I’ve got the trifecta.

Vince Menzione  01:48

It was my turn selfish it was I picked a momentous occasion, Episode 199 of The Ultimate Partner podcast. No, it’s crazy. We started this journey back in what was let’s see it was Oh no. 17 Oh, yeah, it was that long ago, it was 13 or 18. And we got started with it. Or at least the idea. stuff got started. And we put it on hold for two years and came back out in 2020. In fact, Rob was an impetus for me, because we had met a long time. Well, we’ll talk a little bit more of it. Yeah. I can’t believe we’re at 199. Now it’s kind of noisy. Yeah.

Rob Spee  02:28

That’s awesome. Congratulations. Amazing. Thank you. Well done, well done.

Vince Menzione  02:33

So it’s q4, right? We’re just having a conversation about this and what we’ve all been what’s going on in our worlds and how was your fall shaping up? I’ll turn it over to Rob first because I think you’ve been super busy traveling.

Rob Spee  02:46

Yeah. Well, I’ve had some fun traveling for pleasure amongst all the the work and everything. And I’ve got a great team that fills in for me when I’m gone, which is fantastic. I know I can 100% rely on them. And good things happen when I leave. So it’s good. But yeah, this this is crunch time we I was out last week I have a little sailing vacation, which it will be a later podcast for me. But while I was away, two of my leaders stepped in for me. And they participated in the QBR and planning session for 24. So great opportunity for them. But that’s really, right now it’s the q4 Crunch. We got to close strong for end of year. And then we’re talking a lot about what we learned this year and what we’re gonna do differently next year.

Vince Menzione  03:27

Nice. Nice. And it’s great when you can shape leaders that way, right? Bring them in, let them step in and grow in their career.

Rob Spee  03:35

Yeah, it is. It’s nice to see and they’re really stepping up

Paul Bird  03:38

to jello. So I figure when you take time off you actually never get time off because you come back and your inbox is just overflowing so good on you having great leaders there to fill in while you’re what

Rob Spee  03:50

Yeah, thanks. I think as a leader that’s one of the most important things you can do. You’ve got to have a super strong leadership team and have someone who can back in for you and hopefully I don’t ever fall off a sailboat but if I did I know someone else could step in and take it over

Vince Menzione  04:06

to talk more about your sailing journeys a little bit later on in this and Paul Great to see you just wrapping up I mean the timing of this is the day after the Canadian Thanksgiving so great to see I guess you had a house full of guests that from what I understand was

Paul Bird  04:21

full of guests and a great to have friends and family here and we don’t we don’t get a lot of people dropping by throughout the course of the years so to have a full house was was fantastic. Great to see everyone. And now the now the push to the end of the year. Well until your Thanksgiving and then I get a couple of days off. Yeah.

Vince Menzione  04:40

Ours is oddly placed. I always think about that because as soon as you get back from Thanksgiving, it’s that last little crunch before the the Christmas and holidays at the end of the year. So it always seems like it’s a little too short a sprint. I like the Canadian layout.

Rob Spee  04:55

I think you’re right I think we should switch vans.

04:58

I’m going to do that. As long as like it’s fun.

Vince Menzione  05:04

Rob, we missed you, Paul. And I got to be at the catalyst event in Denver, the end of August seems like 100 years ago now. But that was a great event. I thought we’d start there. Like, let’s talk about what’s been happening in our industry. What are you all seeing? And how do you comment about what the changes are where we’re growing as a decade of the ecosystem?

Rob Spee  05:23

I’m curious about the show. What was the what were the hot topics there?

Paul Bird  05:26

Well, I think that the show itself was really a great event for people that were at various stages of their their channel journey, plugged your podcast there and covered a lot of different topics. I mean, there was a lot focusing on ecosystems, co selling a lot of vendors there across the not only the PRM space, but but also channel marketing channel support. So really wide range of topics and really well organized events. So, Vince, I don’t know if you have anything to add. But for me, I think it was a great event for everyone that attended.

Vince Menzione  05:59

I thought it was very well done. And yeah, I had the opportunity to speak at the event. So I got to do a session on the marketplace, all the opportunities that are coming on to the hyper scalar movement right now. But I was so impressed that I talked to Chris and in the company and that they used to organize the event. And I have hired them since to organize our event. So yeah, I really, really was impressed with the quality of the event. Great to meet so many people that are in our space. I think this is almost like an association of everyone that’s in these roles, right, more so than it’s more of an industry event than a specific vertical focus or horizontal focus.

Rob Spee  06:39

Yeah, so many folks in the channel, were there if that’s I? Well, it wasn’t hard being on vacation, but I miss not not attending for that reason, just to see everyone.

Vince Menzione  06:47

Yeah, and a lot of talk about the role of the chief partner officer. Right. So this role is taking on shape. There was a session, that works band helped the focus then on Hammett from workstand lead with Greg Serafin, who was from EY about that role of the chief partner officer. And he comments there like we talked about, like titles here, you still you go by the title, global channel and alliances. Rob, how are you thinking about the chief partner Officer role?

Rob Spee  07:14

Well, yeah, on titles, if it’s just a title change, it’s not that big a difference, I’ll probably change my title there been people were pushing me yesterday on this to SVP of partner ecosystems is more appropriate than the channels and alliances kind of old terminology. So that’s, that’s probably a no brainer. But I to me, the chief partner officer, to me means it’s an elevation to the C suite. Right. So that’s a whole different role. And I think that can be hugely valuable to have an even greater say, in ensuring that the partner ecosystem is infused in everything you do. And that’s always a challenge. I don’t perceive at all that we’re the redheaded stepchild of old and we’re channels used to sit, I think we our partner ecosystems is strategically, extremely important. But you still, of course, the occasions where things are rolled out without thinking about the partners, whether it’s a promotion, campaign product or whatever. Yeah. And that’s where I think elevating it to the C suite could be a logical next step. At the same time, though, I don’t want to lose that connection with the chief revenue officer. But I think being under the CRO is so helpful to be fully aligned. And our stage where we’re at right now, it’s perfect, because we need to integrate the partner ecosystem 100% of the go to market motion. Yeah. Which is owned by the CA CRO. So my alignment with the CRO is just critical.

Vince Menzione  08:46

Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right, in terms of being hand in glove with the CRO right. But but having the visibility to the C suite across, I think about marketing, you talked about promotions, and campaigns and marketing kind of going off on its own and doing things. But what about from your perspective?

Paul Bird  09:00

Well, I still see people in the adoption phase for ecosystems, I think that we’re still in a stage of understanding what does this mean, now as opposed to in the past? And is it new terminology? Is it a different go to market action? So I’m just starting to see more and more people adopt the terminology of ecosystem? I still haven’t seen as many people adopting the sea level partner officer. And when I look at a sea level partner officer, I look at it as in line with the the CRO, are these different roles or, or is an expansion of the same role? And I think it’s critical to the success of an organization that has a go to market plan through channel is to buy in at the C suite and having a CPO in place that’s going to ensure that buy in from the top down. Yeah,

Vince Menzione  09:55

I could argue from both sides. I do thinking having the visibility to the C suite is super important. That alignment going across product, customer success, revenue, and marketing, right as the sort of the four major functions, they’re super important, and it’s so complex going across these organizations,

Rob Spee  10:13

I was just gonna say that I think you can have still though a high degree of influence on the C suite without being in the C suite. Right. And that’s, that’s critical, you’ve got to be able to have that alignment and influence on the team.

Vince Menzione  10:29

What does that influence strategy look like for you? constant communication,

Rob Spee  10:33

right, with the members of the C suite i, which I, I try to maintain, make sure that we have that alignment, and then I’m influencing some of the decisions that they’re making for 24, especially at this stage in the year, it’s really critical to be thinking about all the different areas product direction, marketing direction, even even finance, how we account for the benefits of the ecosystem and how we compensate the ecosystem.

Vince Menzione  11:00

Paul had brought up attribution as a topic area for today’s conversation, I think this ties right in right. How do you show up from an attribution perspective? I don’t know the impact of the partner organization. Paul, do you have something you’d like to add there?

Paul Bird  11:15

Well, and my topic of having attribution was really more on the front lines. In fact, we were debating what comes first today, deal registration or lead distribution? But the question really becomes, how do you understand where your opportunities are originating from, from, from what partner organization from what go to market activity? Are these these opportunities being generated. And I know that at Magento, six, we’re just about to roll out a new capability that basically is completely cookieless, that will attribute any potential opportunity to its founding source, and really difficult to eliminate it and potentially give you almost unlimited or a timeless link back to the original source. So I think this is what we’re seeing more of is not only from a demand generation, they want to have attribution, but then throughout the entire ecosystem, being able to attribute to the various components back to the success and obviously the profitability of the of the go to market action through the through the channels so that that’s where I’m seeing and I’m seeing a lot of people that are looking for for this capability. And happy to see Magento six is delivering it. I mean, quick turnaround as well.

Vince Menzione  12:33

Nice. What about from your side?

Rob Spee  12:36

Yeah, attribution, I think it’s really important to better understand your ecosystem. And it starts with the ad the the origination of the deal, though, sometimes I wish we could just throw that out the window, because that’s so complex today. Who were it was which partner wasn’t which influencer wasn’t which rapper SDR was it, you can just get wrapped around the axle too quickly on that one. But understanding which partners of the ecosystem are involved in the account, and helping you in different ways, I think is really important. And we’ve done a lot of work wasn’t easy, and we still have more work to go. And again, then you can do Magento tricks or any other vendor to automate it. Fully welcoming that because just trying to do it yourself in Salesforce is is a huge lift. We’ve made huge strides, we’ve got a lot of metrics that we never had just even a year ago, which is fantastic. We took it a step too far, though, and tied our compensation for the channel team to attribution. And that created a lot of challenges. Now they became way too much overhead and administration of checking the attribution, then you get into arguments over attribution, not what you want to do. So we’re pulling back from that we want to still measure attribution, but we’re not going to have compensation as it’ll be a little bit tied to that but greatly greatly simplified, I’ll probably be more in the in the area of maybe some spiffs or a few MBAs or something. But overall compensation, you gotta keep it simple.

14:03

No, no degree more.

Vince Menzione  14:05

You brought up compensation, are you are you aligning your channel sellers directly to deals that they originate? Or how do you think about compensation for them?

Rob Spee  14:14

We’re thinking about really radical steps next next year, greatly greatly simplifying and have the really we work in pods. So the sales pod includes the channel team, the SES, towns, anyone that’s part of that regional pod that helps when the business we want everyone is closely aligned to the sales number as possible. We’re all fighting for the same thing, everything we do and building an ecosystem. At the end of the day, it’s got to drive us hitting our sales revenue targets as well as our customer satisfaction targets. That’s what we’re trying to achieve.

Vince Menzione  14:48

And you have both alliances and channels, right. So how do you bring that pod together? Because you’ve got people calling on let’s say, AWS is an alliance partner, but then you have your channel partners who are actually going Going in implementing or influencing deals,

Rob Spee  15:02

yeah, it’s really getting that orchestration going of orchestrating the ecosystem. So our alliances team there, they are responsible for building those alliances, helping us get all the integration points that we need. But in the field between the channel account manager or partner manager and the rep, they’re the ones who need to be driving that orchestration of the ecosystem. And we really see the role of the channel account manager evolving to much more of that, that curator, that custodian of the ecosystem in the region, and assisting the reps and building their ecosystems.

Vince Menzione  15:38

Yeah. So that comes down to how do you drive the right behaviors? Right? How do you how do you have the incentive drive the right behavior for

Rob Spee  15:45

it? Yeah, and never keep everyone focused on the end goal of what we’re trying to accomplish, and not fight over? Yes. And that fight over it,

Paul Bird  15:53

turn it into a shepherd as opposed to a cat herder. way they need to approach it when orchestrating so many components. A proactive Shepherd

Rob Spee  16:02

is what we want. Yes, for sure.

Vince Menzione  16:04

So let’s shift back over to marketing. So Paul, how are a partner marketing teams thinking? How are what are they doing better differently this year than you think they’ve done in the past? Well, I

Paul Bird  16:14

don’t think we’ve seen any kind of seismic shift on the partner marketing. Again, I think it comes down to they want to be able to enable partners with the appropriate tools. But it’s also about driving the adoption and usage of targeted marketing materials, being able to provide co brandable assets, being able to have a strategy that is telling the Better Together story. And then how do we take that to the end user? There’s so much noise in email, is it still effective? There, LinkedIn is becoming increasingly more chaotic when it comes to the amount of information that’s being shared. So I think that we’re still seeing the same activities, and maybe more joint marketing activities than we have in the past. But I don’t think there has been a clear trend that has emerged on how do you break through the noise, so that both the brand and the partner can reach the target, which is obviously the end user. So not a lot new, but I imagine that we’ll start seeing innovation because we still haven’t really seen how generative AI is going to impact marketing. I mean, it does a fantastic job of writing emails for me when I needed to, or summarizing a bunch of technical documents and spitting out something that is digestible for a non technical user. Now I need to see it on the impact of of the partner go to market activity, right? How does the these technologies now allow partners to break through the noise and generate more opportunity for vendors so still waiting patiently.

Vince Menzione  17:52

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Paul Bird  19:17

Well, I think from a real perspective, this ability to create a level of automation, I mean, we first tackled it with deal registration, right. Nobody wants to log into a portal fill out a form anymore. In they would basically just email their reps with the information. So now they’ll have all they do is email the portal and the portal smart enough to pick it up entered in on their behalf and send them a confirmation. But I think that technology here is getting faster than the adoption of the technology. A generalized for what about a year now it’s just around a year’s time. And we haven’t seen it really take off as far as changing a lot of the ways that we do things. We’re starting to see some some implementations and some Some applications of it, but I haven’t seen anybody pushed through. And we’re still evaluating to integrate it further into our product and do our due diligence. But I’m still waiting for that, that killer app to come out from Gen AI. And I think we’re gonna see it. It was its own killer app. But let’s see somebody use this to really make a seismic shift. And we’re seeing some applications. I just think that I want to see the next big thing come out of Gen AI. So that’s what I’m seeing anyway.

Vince Menzione  20:33

Rob, what about from your side? What about?

Rob Spee  20:36

Yeah, I haven’t seen a big uptick yet at beyondtrust. Or even for myself. And part of it is just the time I don’t have time to go open chat GBT and remember my login and then enter some data and get it working to where I want, I’ll just write the email. It’s faster. I think it has to be built into the apps like you guys are doing in the generics pile. I think it’s gonna be built in and made super easy. Link downs, try that I haven’t tried you guys try doing a post because now they offer the option of using chat GBT, when you start your post,

Paul Bird  21:06

I haven’t tried that yet. Actually, I haven’t even seen it, I’m gonna have to check this out. I know that with other tools that we use, like we use SalesLoft for internally for sales and customer success. Yeah, they have an option to create an email using their generative AI. And it’s okay. It’s nothing mind blowing. What I find as far as chat GPT goes is the ability for for me to train it with information. And taking, like I say, our technical documentation, our administrator guides, which are great late night reading material, but it’s going to keep your attention for more than a few minutes. And then having it translate that and the more information that I feed it, the more it starts to understand Magento acts as a platform and an offering and all that we’re capable of doing. So the results it can produce are notably better. So this is where I think it takes time as much as we’d like to see it. But again, the we’re gonna see somebody break through. And it’ll be Do you remember that time when it came out? how

Rob Spee  22:13

far it’s come? So yeah, I wonder it’s kind of like early days of search engines took us a while for everyone to get used to them. And now they’re so powerful. And we do so much with the search engine. And I think Chad GBT will probably go through a similar evolution

Vince Menzione  22:28

while you’re starting to see it embedded in search now, right? So yeah, I’ve been a search. If I type in Ultimate Partner, it doesn’t come up with my website right away, it comes up with an analysis of ultimate guide department. Summary, I guess, if you will,

Rob Spee  22:42

and then read all about Vince.

Vince Menzione  22:44

Yeah, too much, too much. But Microsoft has been leveraging their relationship right with the open AI and copilot is out. And they made some announcements recently in New York City, and I think it’s November 4, you’ll see copilot go live, they’re going to be embedding it more into the operating system, you’ll see things around windows 11. And then certainly outlook and the Dynamics platform and alike have copilot options or capabilities built into it. So it’s a ride alongside not replace mentality, which makes it does, yeah. And getting back to like, I’ll use Gen AR. I’ll go into chat GBT. And I’ll say, This is what I think about I’m going to post but I don’t always like I certainly will never post it exactly the way it’s written. Right? It gets too fluffy, or I have to, I have to tone it down a little bit. Because I think that that will evolve over time. And we’ll get to know the persona of the the user and adjust itself to it. Yeah,

Paul Bird  23:47

yeah. I put in transcripts of my podcast and asked it to create summaries, I have to do it in four or five, in like posts itself, so it can actually get in, but the response it, it gives me is very much in my tone, which is now that’s something where if it can just take care of writing my emails for me and just tell me what it did at the end of the day, I’d be happy about that. Yeah, I

Vince Menzione  24:11

I use an another tool for that. I use otter AI. So otter does a summary. It’ll transcribe the podcast, and it’ll do the summary. I find that within chat, GBT, it doesn’t it won’t consume the entire transcript. I think you probably see that as well.

Paul Bird  24:27

Yeah, I have to do it in bits at a time. And it ends up summarizing every bit and then at the end is for a complete summary. And then it does a pretty decent

Vince Menzione  24:36

job. That’s good to know. It’s good to know for our listeners. So let’s talk about origin stories here. Right? So my path I mentioned, like 20 2017 I had somebody say, Hey, you should do a podcast, you know a lot about partnering. And that’s how I got started. I put it on hold when I went and took the corporate job, Rob and then Rob had started up his podcast and then flip the flip the table around I didn’t said hey, I want to interview you. While I laughed that other company I was like, Hey, this is pretty cool. I like doing this.

Rob Spee  25:07

Yeah. And to push you to get get started again, you did you did you were the

Vince Menzione  25:11

you were the impetus to get me going again. But how did you What was what gave you the thought and the idea?

Rob Spee  25:17

Yeah, my origin while having just come back from sailing, that was my origin was sailing and the sailing podcast called on the wind that I just love listening to and still listen to. And it was very narrative, he would interview all different types of people in the sailing industry, manufacturers, famous sailors, you name it. And I got thinking, well, that’d be kind of fun to do on the channel, right, and came up with the idea of channel journeys. And originally, I was thinking it’d be much more around the journey of people in the channel. But quickly learned, that’s interesting. But what’s much more interesting to listeners is how you overcome specific challenges. And so started coming up with every podcast have a different kind of theme, main topic that we talk about, and which has helped me because all the different challenges that I face, I can have an immediate help by just reaching out to someone and doing a podcast interview on that topic. So it’s like my own consulting access platform, I guess to do but got started. I think I was doing I had just started doing some consulting work at that time when I started that, and quickly landed another job as you often do, and consulting, but decided to keep it going, which was a great call. I just love having it. Yantra supports it. And they haven’t they like what I can do. And I get to interview folks from beyond trust occasionally. So yeah, it’s been a great journey for me, just the whole podcast journey. It’s been a lot of fun.

Vince Menzione  26:37

It is a lot of fun. How about you, Paul?

Paul Bird  26:39

Well, I think this was all going to revolve around Rob here. We sponsored Rob’s podcast, and I was on. And then a couple months later, or maybe six months later, we did another one that you had mentioned that it was a very high performing episode. He came back to us about a week later. Yeah, I mentioned this to our internal team and said, Maybe we should start our own podcast. And they said, Well, we never thought you’d ask. Couple of weeks, we had everything set up and team to work on it internally. And I guess the rest is history. So yeah,

Rob Spee  27:16

it was great. Having Magento acts as a sponsor in those early days helped me get started and then liquid it did it helped you guys launch the podcast. It sure did.

Vince Menzione  27:23

And then Rob was getting started, he had reached out to me right, so back channel on this conversation. And I had forgotten about this conversation. We had Rob until you until you had me on your podcast. And it turned out that you were using the same editor that I had used. Yes. And I was like, Oh, wow, that’s a couple years ago, I forgot about that. Yeah, that was so

Rob Spee  27:47

fun grew up. And we all talked about the other channel podcasters. And sometimes we’re on their shows or vice versa. So it’s, it’s a great channel community and a great channel podcast community.

Vince Menzione  27:56

So any thoughts as we’re entering 2024 Here, not to the distant future, it’s only going to be a couple months from now, what do you what do you see? Like if you had your crystal ball? What do you think we’ll see differently going into 2024? And how can organizations optimize for their success?

Rob Spee  28:13

Well, my view, which is reality, I think the economy is getting more difficult. And over over the weekend, now we have new uncertainties in the world. Unfortunately, that creates a lot of anxiety and just horrible things taking place there. But from a business perspective, it impacts business impacts everybody’s psyche of what’s going on. And so for us, it’s more important than ever, that we really stick to the basics and what we need to do, and helping our customers on their journey to acquiring the product and using the product and leveraging the ecosystem. Now we’ve built it, but how do we really use it effectively. And that’s, that’s the theme for next year is really driving that engagement with the ecosystem at all levels, right. And it’s very different than the kind of single threaded reseller approach. It’s a very multi threaded approach that has huge advantages. When you talk about certainty in an account, whether close or not, will leverage your ecosystem, you’ve got five different points of view and connections. And each of the partners has five connections in the account. That’s a huge network of advice that you can get on where are you in the deal? What does it really take to close? Like champions, Tommy is going to close next week, but my GSI saying you don’t have a shot at all. You’re You’re so far out of alignment right now you’ve got to do this, this and this to do it so we can get happier thinking the deal is gonna close and then you listen to your partner say, Wait a second. No, you’re not there yet. So there’s so many different ways to leverage the ecosystem. That’s what we’re all about next year. It’s

Vince Menzione  29:39

just driving that that engagement of the full ecosystem. And you are so much the canary in the coal mine. Yes. The customer they can sniff what’s happening. Yes. Apart from your side, Paul, what do you see going into 2024?

Paul Bird  29:54

Well, one thing that I did see in 2023, which was really unexpected was A number of channel programs that I saw shut down and reverted back to a direct sales model, surprising and large programs as well. So coming into 2024, I do think this will come to an end, I think that as we start getting these organizations that are going through these tough economic times, and people realizing hold on these channel based organizations they’re actually performing. And that attribution they want for the sale, they’ll be able to attain through the channel program, and it will be a lot more cost effective than having direct reps do that that task, because that’s one of the things I think we’ll see, I think we’ll see the resurgence of more organizations adopting channel, or even going backwards on they canceled their program last year, and maybe they’ll restart in 2024, I think we will see the requirement of integration really come into the everything from the ecosystem, to the marketplaces to the hyperscalers, this is going to really need multiple points of integration, but there will be the expectation of integration. So I think those are the two things that I think we’ll see. And I’d really like to see more events from from you, Vince. And Rob, it’s always great to talk to you in person. But in 2024, we got to at least meet in person. So those are my predictions and some goals for 2024.

Vince Menzione  31:27

I, they were gonna have to reprise this in person in 2024. But I fully appreciate what you had to say about events ball. That’s kind of my segue for my selfish plug here. But what I’ve been seeing this year, and we’ve talked about this a little bit has been certainly the role of the hyperscalers, it become more and more dominant, right, not only the data centers and all the underlying technologies of the operating systems that hold the ISVs right on top of, but now with AI, they own even a larger portion of the IP. And then certainly we’ve seen marketplaces really take off where Canalis is saying it’s going to be 45 to $50 billion will flow through marketplaces by the end of 2025. And the recognition that this CO selling methodology, including the hyperscale era, and it gets us access to $200 billion in durable cloud budgets, because the because those three hyperscalers are selling large agreements, to enterprise organizations and mid market organizations. One of the other things I’ve been seeing too is the mid market is becoming more of a thing, it’s becoming more important and relevant, is a huge opportunity for growth, Microsoft is investing 75% of its channel incentives in the mid market space. And they’re also saying they’re going to double their partner attach this coming year. So we’re bringing that all together, you mentioned ecosystem, it’s going to be an event to spark the ecosystem. We’re calling it ultimate partner live. And we’d love to have you both there. But if you don’t get to this one, we’re going to have you at the next event. But it’s going to be in Dallas, Texas, November 13, through the 15th. And we’ll provide a link in our show notes for listeners to to sign up, we’re expecting over 300 partners in the room, it’s a it’s going to be an exciting event.

Rob Spee  33:12

That’s awesome. That’s who’s your target audience that should attend this.

Vince Menzione  33:16

So we have all of the large scale partners coming so all the big partners like the CD W’s Shi insights of the world will be there. We’ve got partners of all types, we got a lot of ISPs coming into the room, because marketplace is an important function. And then also they also sell to both direct to enterprises, but they also sell primarily through channel partners or resellers are influenced partners to the to this mid market customer. So it’s, it’s all of the above, it’s the ISVs. It’s the large scale partners. It’s some of the YesYes largest size and smaller size, cares about optimizing their business this coming year, and is aligning to market the priorities of Microsoft which are marketplace, AI, and the mid market the SMC market our event. So we’ve seen really great uptick in people signing up for this.

Rob Spee  34:08

That sounds awesome. But those I’m bullish on marketplaces, I’m also bullish on distribution on the destes. And we’re really seeing great success with our distributors, stepping it up to the next level and playing a massive role in in what we do from service delivery, partner enablement, really, or ecosystem orchestration, all of that, and we expect them to play a more important role even in the mid market, like you’re talking about and driving that higher velocity transaction. So I like to see that the hyperscalers are starting to figure it out to that they see a role for distribution. Yes, and they’re starting to figure out how to play together. That’s super important because I think both are going to be involved in and a vast majority of the business that we do.

Vince Menzione  34:52

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Paul Bird  34:55

No Rob, have you seen more of a value add coming from the From distribution, as opposed to more transactional, they’re now being involved more and providing additional value throughout the the course of the selling motion.

Rob Spee  35:10

Yeah, much more value add. And it’s, it’s leaning heavily on the, I’d say more the customer success side of it, and actually building up services teams to be sort of bench augmentation to the partners, and helping to train the partners even stepping in to help certify the partners for us on the technical side. So that’s hugely important. They’re playing a role in starting to organize what we call the trifecta events. That’s our big trend and marketing, as we always have multiple partners will have a reseller, a couple of our tech alliance partners, the distributor all playing a role in the marketing event, and they can help drive attendance, they all have a place to play in that marketing activity. So yeah, a lot more value, and we’re expecting a lot more value out from them. And they’re they’re starting to deliver, it’s really good to say they’re reinventing

Vince Menzione  35:59

themselves. They are

Rob Spee  36:01

Yeah,

Paul Bird  36:02

we’ll have to go back and listen to our our episode from the beginning of this year, because we did make some predictions. And I think it will say the change in distribution is going to change. So I’m pretty sure we got that one, right. Yeah, yeah,

Rob Spee  36:19

they’re definitely. And we worked with Ingram I was just at the Ingram one event, they’re doing some really interesting stuff with their ex Vantage platform that can take it up another level and that it’s a different platform than the hyper scalar platform has serves a different role. They both have an important role to play.

Vince Menzione  36:35

Yeah, interesting. Certainly, they certainly do, right, because the enterprise, the enterprise organizations, that the hyper scalars are never going to reach all of those customers themselves. And they rely on the distribution to what we call the longtail to take you through to the end customer. Yeah, for sure. Well, this has been terrific, so great to have you both on Ultimate Partner. And like I said, we have to get together in person this coming year, so we’re gonna have to find our venue.

Rob Spee  37:01

Yeah, we definitely do. The fun events. Congratulations on episode 199. I got to ramp up double weekly or something I’m ever gonna pass, you know, time for that. So I got a ways to go. But it’s great to see your continued success and how you’re evolving your your company. And just you’re finding new ways to add value, which is really fun to say. Thank you so much.

Paul Bird  37:22

Congratulations on 199. Yeah, we’ll get there. It’ll take me a few more years. But I’ll get there. That’s for sure.

Vince Menzione  37:29

I couldn’t think of two better gentlemen to spend this episode and celebrate 199 With so thank you both for joining today.

Rob Spee  37:37

Yeah, it’s been fun. Thank you.

37:38

It’s been a great time.

Announcer  37:43

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner with your host Vince Menzione. Online at Ultimate Partner.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partner. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner