Holiday Encore – John Jester: Reshaping Veeam’s Future with a Partner-First Approach

We are bringing you some of the best episodes of 2023 to help you prepare for success in 2024; this one is an incredible example of a Top ISV Transforming to a Cloud Model.

A Top Industry Executive Joins Ultimate Partner®

As a former executive at Microsoft and Google, John Jester knows a thing or two about driving transformative initiatives now, as the Chief Revenue Officer at Veeam – a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in backup and data management – Jester is again bringing his expertise to the table.

In this Ultimate Partner episode, we sit down with John Jester to discuss his vision for Veeam and how he’s leveraging the company’s rich partner ecosystem and over 400,000 customers to drive growth and innovation. By putting partners and customers first, Jester is reshaping Veeam’s future and leading the charge in the channel.

In John’s Words

As Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), John leads Veeam’s go-to-market growth strategy and builds upon Veeam’s position as the #1 provider of Modern Data Protection solutions spanning Cloud, Virtual, Physical, Hybrid, SaaS, and Kubernetes.

Before Veeam, John spent three years at Google Cloud as VP of Customer Experience, ensuring customers adopt and realize value from Google Cloud. This included global leadership of Professional Services, Customer Success, Customer Support, Training, Cloud Certifications, and Customer Engagement through the Executive Briefing Center and Customer Advisory Boards.

Before Google, John spent 20 years at Microsoft in numerous roles, including Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Customer Success, where he established a new organization to drive the adoption of Microsoft’s cloud services, Vice President of Worldwide Specialist Sales, where he led enterprise specialist sales across the full suite of enterprise cloud services including the transformation of the sales force to a cloud/subscription model, General Manager of Global Accounts with responsibility for Microsoft’s top 100 enterprise customers, General Manager of the UK Enterprise Business, and General Manager of America’s Incubation Business to drive sales of the company’s new and acquired products.

John attended George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, earning his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in business administration. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Kelly, and their two daughters. John enjoys golfing, cycling, and sports car racing in his spare time.

What You’ll Learn

• John’s Background at Microsoft and Google (2:33)
• Veeam’s Mission (5:12)
• The Partner Opportunity (10:32)
• Why partners don’t always get it right? (16:19)
• Best Career Advice (20:16)

Why Ultimate Partner?

Visit our website.

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. Visit our website.

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partners, microsoft, customers, partnerships, customer, partnering, organizations, veeam, marketplace, john, leading, create, cloud solution provider, successful, competencies, leaders, solution, building, ultimate guide, model

SPEAKERS

Announcer, John Jester, Vince Menzione

Vince Menzione  00:00

A former Microsoft and Google executive, now leading transformation for a top software company by focusing on its rich partner ecosystem, and it’s over 400,000 customers. My next guest on Ultimate Partner is well known for driving and leading transformative initiatives with two of the tech giants and is now leading the charge at this jogger nut in the channel.

Announcer  00:26

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  00:46

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will John jester is the Chief Revenue Officer at Veeam. A Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in the backup and data management space beam has an enviable footprint of both customers and partners. And John is reshaping and leading beams partner first charge. I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I enjoyed welcoming John Jester. I’m so excited to welcome athletic greens as the latest sponsor to Ultimate Partner friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 20 years now. About five years ago I added athletic greens and now their product ag one has become my go to green drink supplement. Ag one is packed with 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, Whole Foods or superfoods, probiotics and antigens. If you’d like to give ag one a try athletic greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five travel packs with every new purchase. Check them out at athletic greens.com forward slash Vince AM. John, welcome to the podcast.

John Jester  02:16

Vince, it’s fantastic to be here with you. On the Ultimate Partner podcast.

Vince Menzione  02:22

I am so excited to welcome you as a guest on The Ultimate Partner podcast. You’re the chief revenue officer at Veeam, a leader in the backup recovery and data management space. And we both worked at Microsoft so welcome.

John Jester  02:36

Yeah, no, it’s great to be here. I think we shared eight years together at Microsoft for quite quite some time together, working with partners helping them be successful back at Microsoft.

Vince Menzione  02:48

So a rich career in technology, of course, Microsoft and the work that you’ve done at Google. But for our listeners that don’t know you, can you tell us a little bit more about John Jester. Yeah, you

John Jester  03:00

bet too. You know, we already mentioned this, but I spent almost 20 years at Microsoft various roles, including the global accounts business to the top 100 enterprise accounts around the world, the worldwide specialist sales team, which was basically where Microsoft had the specialists focused on cloud, and then building out Microsoft’s customer success business, which owned global adoption of Microsoft 365, dynamics 365. And then consumption for Azure. So long time at Microsoft, and then a little over three years at Google Cloud, running worldwide professional services, Customer Success support, learning and the executive engagement program. But it was all about, hey, how do you work closely with partners to add value to customers, make them successful using Google Cloud, make them successful using Microsoft? So yeah, long, long history, working with partners long history in the enterprise space?

Vince Menzione  03:55

Yeah, you’re being a little bit modest, I think about the business units you ran, and they were transformational at Microsoft. I mean, certainly the CSU or the client success unit was a new level of impact that Microsoft was trying to make towards the customer moving away and shifting from the old model to this new consumption model. Right.

John Jester  04:14

Yeah. And I think all of us have that challenges. You know, we work in a cloud world is a How does a vendor like Microsoft, or Google or Bing work closely with a partner ecosystem, to add value to customers? And I think that’s one of the things that’s been great about the shift to cloud is it’s about adding value. And you know, Microsoft, investing in creating a customer success unit is a great example of that. Moving from, hey, I’m going to sell you software to I really want to work with you and add value and you know, Microsoft, that really went a long way in helping customers be successful. And then same thing at Google. Google made a big investment to build out customer success to help their customers get more value from the platform.

Vince Menzione  04:59

Veeam is a nificant leader in the space that you’re in, you joined this organization? Well, almost a year ago now, right?

John Jester  05:06

Yeah, so I’ve been at Veeam as Pharaoh for nine months now. And you’re right, we are a leader in the marketplace, we’re very proud. We’re number two worldwide market share, according to IDC. And probably even more importantly, we have 450,000 customers now talk to those customers, I talked to our partners. And we know that data is one of their most important assets. And we really aspire to help them manage that data, protect that data, anywhere they have, it could be on premises, could be in the cloud could be through a cloud solution provider. But we want to provide that solution to help customers manage data wherever it is, and protect that data. So that’s our mission. That’s what we’re focused on.

Vince Menzione  05:50

So what do you hope to accomplish?

John Jester  05:52

Yeah, so I think the main thing that we want to do is help customers manage and protect their data wherever it is. That’s the goal. That’s our focus. And we’re to do that by working closely with our partners. I think one of the things that we’re so proud of at Veeam is we are 100% indirect business, every deal we do goes through the partners. And it’s core to how we think about our strategy, its core, and how we think about going to market. But even with that focus, working closely with partners, I think the main thing that we try to anchor ourselves in is how do we make our customers successful. And I think that’s how you create the best partner models is you don’t just sit down and talk between the vendor and the partners, and what we’re going to do together, you actually start with the customer? And what’s the innovation we’re bringing to the customer? What are the business problems we’re trying to solve? And then reverse out what’s the right partner models that you can go to market together and make those customers successful. And I think that’s so important. Didn’t, you know, a couple of things that we’re starting to see, you know, being our product portfolio is getting broader, you know, we’ve added in protection for Microsoft 365, we just launched a new product for Salesforce. And then we’ve really seen tremendous growth for a product we call caspin, which is protecting Kubernetes. But all that means we’re getting a more complex product portfolio. And that means we have to work with our partners in new ways. We’ve launched a competency program, so that we can help make sure our partners have the right competencies across that product portfolio. And the other thing that our partners came to us and said is, hey, we’re starting to specialize, how can you help us work together the partner ecosystem? So that’s something we’ve really focused on lately? Is it bringing our partners together so that we can create better solutions for our customers? So I’d say, hey, those are things that we’re really trying to get done, but anchor ourselves, let’s make the customer successful? And how do we work with our partners to make that happen?

Vince Menzione  07:59

I love the focus on the customer, right? The customer being the Northstar theme has a really strong pedigree, I mean, I speak to some of your partners, and I know many of your partners. And in fact, some of your partners will say that Veeam is like my favorite organization to work with. And I’ve heard that literally from one of the leading organizations out there. So this focus on customer, how do organizations and partners best work with Veeam? Is there a strategy for them to engage with you and your organization?

John Jester  08:29

Yeah, absolutely. And it makes me incredibly proud when I hear you say that, about partners really wanting to work with them, because it is part of our DNA is working with partners. And you know, we do our partner advisory councils every quarter. It’s like gold to me the feedback I get from partners, but yeah, working with Veeam. So we have 35,000 partners that work with us. We’re proud of that. But what we want to do is engage with the partner. And I mentioned that competency program, that’s something that we’ve really been investing in, but work with us, help us understand, where do you want to focus? Where are your competencies? How can we help you develop those and go to market together, one of the things I’d call out is we have something called Veeam, cloud solution provider program. And this is something customers started asking for is, hey, we want more of a cloud solution provider type service that we can consume like cloud, but can be customized can meet our needs. And we now have over 10,000 vcsp partners who are hosting beam who are working with customers creating these unique solutions. And I just bring that up as one example of a thinking about a customer need reverse engineering, what’s the right partner model, coming up with the competencies and then really taking that to market together. So that’s a great example of what we do together, of course, as some of our customers want to work, you know, with the hyperscalers so we’re in the marketplace. is for Azure for AWS for GCP. And then our distribution partners. They’ve got their own marketplaces. And they came to us and said, Hey, how can you be part of that. And I would just mentioned a couple, stream one from TD cynics aerosphere. Ingram marketplace. So, you know, we really try to listen to our customers, and then work with our partners to build the solutions they want, and then create it in a mechanism that they can purchase and consume it based on their choice.

Vince Menzione  10:32

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John Jester  11:44

Yeah, so we have a dedicated onboarding program where we go through the technical competencies, and a lot of those VCs fees actually customize our product, and they add value added services on it. In that’s where we spend the time with them is it we don’t just want partner number 10,001. Offering beam as, as much as I love our partner ecosystem, what we want to do is, hey, what are the unique competencies they have? How could they extend our product? How could they add additional services on that add more value for the partners. And that’s the type of conversations we really lean in and spend time on. I think we’re somewhat unique in that we put part of our partner organization actually in our engineering team, because I really find that’s how we do the most innovative things is understanding what the partner is trying to achieve. And then actually working with our engineering team, how do we engage? How do we create some of the API’s, some of our partners need to really customize that solution and make it unique? But that’s, that’s what I’d say on the vcsp. Front, like, come work with us. Talk to us about your customer base, the competencies you have. And then let’s create something unique in the market. And I’d even say, you know, the GSI is have approached us and talked about, hey, they’re building out business continuity practices, they’re building out data protection practices, how can we work together to make veem part of that, and it’s the same thing, it’s doing some engineering work, it’s doing work to understand what customers need, and then create that unique and differentiated solution that makes the partner have unique offer and market, and also, frankly, makes being more relevant to our customers in that space. So these are areas that I get excited about, is hey, how do we really think about the customer reverse engineer the solution? And then do the engineering work? Or do the commercial work to bring it together?

Vince Menzione  13:36

Well, I love what you have to say, because what you really said was partner led to me, right? Because I see so many organizations, whether they be SAS or independent software vendors that tried to take this direct approach to market. In fact, that’s pretty much the norm these days, versus what you’ve said, you have integrated partner across the various components of your C suite, you’re going across product, you’re going across marketing, you’re going across selling as the CRM of the organization to drive that. And you’ve been around this partner world for quite some time. And this is the Ultimate Partner. So John, I need to ask you this. What do you see from the best partnerships?

John Jester  14:13

He I think there’s three things that jumped out to me when I think about the best partnerships. The first is what we’ve already hit on. Start with a customer reverse engineer. The solution you need to bring to market to start there with the customer. Second thing is a partner models have to have success and profitability for the partner for the vendor. Getting that right. I know it sounds simplistic, but the long term partnerships I have are ones where we sit down together we do our quarterly business reviews, those metrics, those KPIs mean that the vendors being successful, the partners being successful, and then ultimately the customers being successful and that’s just one thing I’ve got to brag on about beam. Our net promoter score NPS is 82 One, hey, that’s about having a product that customers love. It also is about having partners that implement that product and make it work. And we would not have achieved that NPS of 82, without our great partner ecosystem without great product. So it’s bringing it all together that I think is so important. So three things, start with the customer, reverse engineer that solution. And then the second thing there that I think is so important is building the right model from the start that mutual success. And then great communication and QBRs, and reviews.

Vince Menzione  15:33

And you pointed out the value back to the partner, you’ve mentioned this a few times. And I want to stress it right, because sometimes, again, the direct model, but even the marketplace model doesn’t always allow for value on both sides. In fact, many of the partners that we all know and love, are they a poor a marketplace, I’ll be candid and saying this, because they don’t see enough value. They don’t see the top line revenue to their organizations generally. And they’re not seeing the incremental value and embracing marketplaces. But what you’re telling me and telling our audience here is, in fact, you’re creating joint value you’re creating, they’re building on top of the Vehm solution, which is adding incremental value to the offering, but also greater value to the customer.

John Jester  16:19

Yeah. And I think that’s so important that if you build that type of model, you’re going to create long term success. And that’s what we’re oriented on.

Vince Menzione  16:28

So you’ve been around these partnerships for quite some time. I mean, 20 years at Microsoft, I mean, I feel like Microsoft almost invented the channel back if you go back to Boca Raton, and the first PC, right? And then three years of Google running a client based or customer focused organization, but also very partner centric. Why do you think that organizations often don’t get it right? Like, what would you say to the partners that you had worked with? Or the organizations that you were trying to partner with? That didn’t get it? Right? What would you say to them? Now,

John Jester  17:00

I’d say the first thing that I always run into when something goes wrong in a partnership, it’s poor communication sounds so simple, but how many times is someone may be unhappy with the dynamics of the partnership, or you’ve got a big customer implementation that’s going wrong, and instead of communicating, saying, I need help, or saying, Hey, this is just not working? For me, it’s putting pressure on me from an economical standpoint, that’s not sustainable, like be transparent, have the conversation. And I’ve always found that when you have an open dialogue, you can course correct, you can fix partnerships, you can fix a challenging customer implementation, etcetera, where it goes wrong, you don’t have the open communication, things build up. And inevitably, there’s some type of blow up and that can be unrecoverable. And so that’s my number one thing is open communication. You know, we’re only successful if we make our end customer successful. And that comes by working and adapting, and thinking that we’re going to have everything right from day one, and we’re gonna have the perfect model and the perfect deal. It’s just not realistic. We’re going to have to adapt, we’re going to have to change. And if we communicate, and we talk to each other, we can make that happen.

Vince Menzione  18:14

Yeah, I find it as well, right. organizations don’t communicate enough. I say you need to over communicate almost in an aggressive way, but a diplomatic way. And point out, like what’s not working, right, we’ve got green, yellow, red on our scorecard. We’re yellow or red. But we’re not talking about that. It’s almost like the elephant in the room. People go into the meeting with kind of that on their mind, right?

John Jester  18:36

Yeah, you’re spot on. I spent three and a half years in the UK. While I was working with Microsoft, and there was a term I picked up on there. They call it tea and biscuits, which means, hey, you sit down, you have a meeting with the partner, maybe you have tea, you have biscuits, you’re very nice. You don’t talk about anything difficult. And it’s so important to you know, stay away from that type of relationship, because it may feel good in the meeting, you may walk out and everyone’s like, Oh, we didn’t rock the boat. But you’re not actually creating a great partnership. You’re not building better solutions. You’re not taking care of customers. So I always say, a avoid the tea and biscuits meeting, I do enjoy the tea and biscuits. Don’t get me wrong. Talk about the tough issues go after that elephant in the room. That’s how you’re going to have a better partnership. Unlike tea

Vince Menzione  19:25

and biscuits, I might use it. I’ve been using the term Barney meetings. You know, I love you, you love me. And then almost Kumbaya, right? So many times I’d had these meetings when I was a GM at Microsoft with partners, and we’d have this great meeting, we’d say we’re going to do all these great things, and then nothing would happen. we’d all go away. And I’d ask the PDM later on, like whatever happened, and there was no follow up, right?

John Jester  19:49

Yeah. So important.

Vince Menzione  19:51

So I love what you have to say about the partnership side and we’re gonna we’re gonna reuse some of this but I’d love to pivot like you Have had just an amazing career. John, I was taking a look at your LinkedIn profile again this morning. And you know, great pedigree of leadership roles across these amazing organizations, the leaders in this industry. Was there a spark? Was there a best piece of advice? Like, what got John jester on the path to this point in your career?

John Jester  20:22

So I’d say this is not anything, that’s rocket science. But I’d say early in my career, so when pulled me aside, and gave me really good advice, which is, it’s not what you accomplish. It’s how you accomplish it. And I know that sounds simplistic, but I think a good test for all of us to have, especially early in career when you’re leading teams is, hey, you’re going to work on a tough project together. And that project, let’s say it’s a successful project. That’s not actually what’s going to determine the long term sustainability of your ability to get things done. It’s going to be the people on that team, would they volunteer to work for you, again, to work with you again. So how you get things done, how you treat people, how you make them successful, is actually much more important to the long term sustainability of delivering results, then, hey, you go in your aggressive you get a project on the project to success early in our career, we think, hey, we did it. High five, job well done. It’s actually really how you did it. And do people want to continue to work with you. That’s what will drive long term sustainable results.

Vince Menzione  21:35

I love what you have to say here. Is there any words of advice for leaders out there looking to be better leaders?

John Jester  21:42

Yeah, I think Kate, the big thing, and I sound like a broken record is they start with the customer, reverse engineer what you need to get done, enable your teams put the KPIs in place, open communication, doing all those things, I think is what sets us up for success.

Vince Menzione  21:58

I love that. So John, we’re gonna have a little bit of fun. This is one of my favorite questions I get to ask, and I don’t ask it of every guest. But I do want to ask this of you. You are hosting a dinner party. And for this amazing dinner party, you can invite any three guests from the present? Or the past? Whom would you invite? And why?

John Jester  22:20

Yeah, it’s a fascinating question. So who I would invite, I would invite Albert Einstein, Leonardo, Da Vinci, Isaac Newton. And why would I do that? Because I think all of them, obviously, were innovative. And were thought leaders in their respective timeframes they were all also thought of is probably slightly crazy by the mainstream for coming up with these creative and innovative ideas. But I think the level of personal conviction, the ability to think through incredibly difficult challenges, you know, you think about Albert Einstein, the theories he came up with, they’re still being upheld as we do additional research, etc. So I just think it’d be fascinating to just try to get a sense over this dinner conversation into their thought process, how they went about things, thinking through completely new undiscovered areas, and then coming up with inventions on the back of it. So those are my three. I’m a bit of a geek, so you know, you can you can see who comes to dinner.

Vince Menzione  23:23

I love it. I love it. Where are you going to host this party? Do you have a location planned out?

John Jester  23:28

I think I could see this happening. Probably in Napa Valley down to California. I think if we had the right wine set up a little sons that action, we could get the most creativity out of this conversation, really get people to open up and chat.

Vince Menzione  23:43

I love that I think Leonardo would definitely open up with a nice glass of right. What do you think? I do to John for listeners? This is 2023. And we’re really stepping into 2023. Now, right? Any words of advice, we’ve had a little bit of headwinds in the economy. I feel optimistic about 2023. So I was hoping you can give our listeners some best words of advice or wisdom to launch us up into a very successful 2023

John Jester  24:12

event. You know, it’s early February, I think most of us have just wrapped up our sales kickoff, would I say is a take that energy, take that excitement, go meet with your partners, go meet with your customers, craft the solutions that our customers need? It’s a better environment right now from a business perspective. That’s the signals I’m getting from customers from partners, etc. Take that energy and excitement and use it to get off to a fantastic q1.

Vince Menzione  24:40

I love what you have to say, John, in fact, I again, am optimistic we in the tech sector have an opportunity and obligation to lead at this time. And what you said is just so right on for that. John, I want to thank you. It has been a pleasure having you as a guest on Ultimate Partner. I know how valuable and how limited your Time is so really great to have you join our listeners today.

John Jester  25:03

Thanks for having me. Vince really enjoyed it.

Vince Menzione  25:05

Thank you. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Partner. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner executive, and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail, and that ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Partner.com.

Announcer  25:58

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 partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner