Best of LinkedIn: Channel Marketing CW 05/ 06

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgeier and Frennis based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about channel marketing in calendar weeks five and six.

00:00:07: Frennis is a B to B market research partner helping enterprises translate market, customer, and competitive insights into actionable strategies that drive growth and success across their channel and partner ecosystems.

00:00:21: Welcome back to the deep dive.

00:00:23: Today, we're looking at what's been happening in channel marketing over weeks five and six.

00:00:27: And, you know, looking through the sources, it kind of feels like we're watching the end of an era.

00:00:31: The end of an era?

00:00:33: That sounds pretty dramatic.

00:00:34: Maybe

00:00:34: a little.

00:00:35: But it's like the old way of doing things.

00:00:37: You know, the vague slogans, the handshake deals.

00:00:40: It's all being taken apart by hard data.

00:00:42: I see what you mean.

00:00:43: The big theme here isn't just partnering anymore.

00:00:46: It's precision.

00:00:47: We're talking hard math, big program changes, and the absolute dominance of marketplaces.

00:00:53: Exactly, and that's what we need to get into today.

00:00:55: What's replacing that old spray and pray model?

00:00:57: Because it looks like it's a lot of, well, uncomfortable conversations with the CFO.

00:01:01: Uncomfortable, yes, but also very profitable if you get it

00:01:06: right.

00:01:06: Okay, so let's start there with the money.

00:01:09: Our first theme, partner value measurement and ROI discipline.

00:01:13: And the first thing to go, it seems, is the metric we've all leaned on for years.

00:01:18: Influenced revenue.

00:01:19: Oh, yeah.

00:01:20: It's dead.

00:01:21: Rob Moyer had a post that was just brutal on this.

00:01:23: He called it the CFO reality check.

00:01:25: It's so true.

00:01:26: I mean, we all love to say we influenced a massive pipeline number.

00:01:30: We do, but the CFO actively dislikes it.

00:01:34: Moyer's point is that it sounds like you're just taking credit for a deal that was probably going to close anyway.

00:01:38: So

00:01:38: you lose all credibility.

00:01:39: Instantly.

00:01:40: It just sounds vague and, you know, self-serving.

00:01:43: So if influence is out, what's in?

00:01:46: How do you actually justify your budget without the finance team rolling their eyes?

00:01:49: You have to speak their language and their language is probability.

00:01:53: Moyer argues for something called win rate lift or WRL.

00:01:56: Win rate lift.

00:01:57: Okay.

00:01:57: How does that work in practice?

00:01:58: It's

00:01:58: actually pretty simple.

00:02:00: You take scenario A, your direct sales team going it alone.

00:02:03: Maybe their win rate is say, twenty-two percent.

00:02:05: Yeah, that's a pretty standard baseline.

00:02:07: Right.

00:02:08: Then you have scenario B, where a partner is attached to the deal.

00:02:12: And suddenly the win rate is thirty four percent.

00:02:16: Ah, so that twelve percent different.

00:02:18: That's the lift.

00:02:19: That's the hard number.

00:02:20: You're not talking about feelings.

00:02:22: You're telling the CFO, give me a dollar and I will increase our statistical probability of winning by twelve percentage points.

00:02:29: That completely reframes the conversation.

00:02:31: It's not about credit.

00:02:32: It's about de-risking the pipeline.

00:02:34: Exactly.

00:02:34: Yeah.

00:02:35: And that leads to efficiency, which brings me to this analysis from Badri Vardarajan on cybersecurity vendors.

00:02:44: It really drives this point home.

00:02:45: This was the one comparing vendor one and vendor three, right?

00:02:48: I saw that.

00:02:48: Yeah.

00:02:49: On the surface, they look almost identical.

00:02:51: Same kind of products, same number of people and their partner teams.

00:02:54: But the results.

00:02:54: They

00:02:55: were miles apart.

00:02:56: Totally.

00:02:56: Vendor one was getting about one point two five million in revenue per seller.

00:03:01: Vendor three was getting six million

00:03:03: six million.

00:03:04: That's a staggering difference.

00:03:05: So what was vendor three doing?

00:03:07: Yeah,

00:03:07: it wasn't about having a bigger team.

00:03:09: It was about having a cleaner pipe.

00:03:11: They were just you know getting more out of what they already had.

00:03:14: and it boils down to two things motivation and Enablement.

00:03:17: so better incentives and better resources

00:03:20: basically.

00:03:20: Yeah and avoiding what Tariq Muhammad calls activity theater,

00:03:24: huh?

00:03:24: Activity theater.

00:03:26: I love that.

00:03:26: It's perfect, isn't it?

00:03:28: He warns against those vanity metrics like number of partners on boarded or portal logins.

00:03:34: The classic slide in the QBR deck.

00:03:36: that means absolutely nothing.

00:03:37: Exactly.

00:03:38: He says you have to look at the real unit economics.

00:03:41: Like partner attributed, cack.

00:03:44: Is the partner actually lowering your cost to acquire a customer?

00:03:48: They should be.

00:03:48: And he also mentioned net dollar retention.

00:03:51: Right.

00:03:51: Are they helping you grow the accounts you already have?

00:03:53: If not, what's the real value?

00:03:55: You know, there was one more piece on this from Lena Flightman that I thought was so smart because it flips the whole thing on its head.

00:04:01: Oh yeah, the mindset shift.

00:04:03: She says, vendors are asking the wrong question.

00:04:06: They're

00:04:06: always asking, how do I get my partners to sell my stuff?

00:04:09: Which is such a vendor-centric view.

00:04:11: Her point is, you should be asking, why does this partner even want me in their portfolio?

00:04:16: And if you get that right, she says, partner-led deals can hit a sixty percent close rate.

00:04:21: But only if the value for the partner is there.

00:04:24: And it's not just margin.

00:04:26: It's about giving them access to a new market or protecting their services business.

00:04:30: It's about fitting into their world.

00:04:32: That's a perfect transition.

00:04:33: Because talking about fitting into ecosystems, we have to talk about marketplaces.

00:04:38: Yeah,

00:04:38: it's unavoidable.

00:04:39: This becoming the new B to B infrastructure.

00:04:42: Which is our theme too.

00:04:43: Marketplace and platform-led channel growth.

00:04:45: And some of these numbers are just... Mind blowing.

00:04:48: They

00:04:48: really are.

00:04:49: Dexter Hardy and Daniela Strada shared some omnia research about Microsoft.

00:04:53: They're projecting the Microsoft marketplace will be a three hundred billion dollar opportunity by twenty thirty.

00:05:00: Three hundred billion.

00:05:02: That's not a channel.

00:05:02: That's the economy of a country.

00:05:04: It is.

00:05:05: And the point they made is that it's not just a listing.

00:05:07: It's like a two hundred and forty seven salesperson.

00:05:09: But only if you have the operational systems behind it.

00:05:12: Like private offers and co-sell readiness.

00:05:15: And it's not just Microsoft.

00:05:16: We saw data from Roman Kyrsanov at Google Cloud that showed their revenue up forty-eight percent.

00:05:22: But the crazy stat was that partner commitments were up sixteen times.

00:05:28: Sixteen X. That's not growth.

00:05:30: That's a strategic pivot.

00:05:32: They're building their entire AI distribution model around the ecosystem.

00:05:36: So when you hear numbers like that from giants like Microsoft and Google, my first question is always, is there any room for startups here?

00:05:43: Actually,

00:05:44: yeah.

00:05:45: It's almost the opposite.

00:05:46: Elena Kennedy pointed out that for AI native startups, the marketplace is an accelerator.

00:05:51: An accelerator!

00:05:52: They're seeing eighty-eight percent revenue growth and deals closing seventy-five percent faster.

00:05:57: Seventy-five

00:05:57: percent faster.

00:05:58: How is that even possible?

00:05:59: Enterprise sales cycles take forever.

00:06:02: Because they're tapping into the enterprise cloud commit budgets.

00:06:04: Ah, okay.

00:06:06: The magic wand.

00:06:07: It really is.

00:06:08: A big company has already committed, say, fifty million dollars to Azure.

00:06:12: It's pre-approved, pre-spent money.

00:06:14: So buying a startup's software through the marketplace isn't a new budget request.

00:06:19: It's just drawing down a balance, a procurement checkbox.

00:06:22: Precisely.

00:06:23: But, and this is a huge but, Eric Cansley pointed out, the biggest barrier isn't the tech.

00:06:30: What is it then?

00:06:31: It's internal alignment.

00:06:33: So your own company gets in the way.

00:06:35: It's a cross-functional motion, product, sales, finance.

00:06:38: They all have to be on the same page.

00:06:41: Your sales team has to know how they get paid on these deals.

00:06:43: If you just treat it like a marketing task, you'll fail.

00:06:46: And when you get it right, it can be incredibly fast.

00:06:49: Christakosia mentioned XBOW launched on AWS Marketplace in under two weeks.

00:06:53: Two weeks, that's the new speed of commerce.

00:06:55: Okay, so new metrics, new marketplace engines.

00:06:59: All of this is forcing huge program changes.

00:07:02: which is our third theme.

00:07:04: Program changes and partner model recalibration.

00:07:07: Recalibration is a very polite word for it.

00:07:09: It's a total shakeup.

00:07:10: And the ground zero seems to be Microsoft again.

00:07:12: Diego Rodriguez shared some news that I'm sure made a few people nervous.

00:07:16: Of the end of the qualified referral program, the QRP.

00:07:18: Yeah, that's a big deal.

00:07:19: Why does that matter so much?

00:07:20: Well, the QRP was kind of the Wild West for referrals.

00:07:24: Now, everything is being forced into the Unified Partner Center.

00:07:28: And as Rob Piggan pointed out, The bar inside that center is being raised.

00:07:33: Raised how?

00:07:34: It's not just a new interface, is it?

00:07:36: No.

00:07:37: Microsoft is using AI to validate Bant in real time.

00:07:41: Wait, hold on.

00:07:42: The AI checks your referrals quality.

00:07:45: Yeah.

00:07:46: If you submit a low quality lead, just a name and a prayer, it just stops.

00:07:50: The AI flags it and it goes nowhere.

00:07:53: It's not an admin task anymore.

00:07:54: You need credibility.

00:07:55: Wow.

00:07:56: That's going to have a huge human impact.

00:07:58: It already is.

00:07:59: Dylan Cohen wrote about this, partner orgs are restructuring.

00:08:02: The order takers who just waited for referrals to come in are

00:08:05: out.

00:08:05: Who are they being replaced with?

00:08:06: Hunters.

00:08:07: People who can actually go out and sell complex AI solutions, especially in the mid-market, which is this huge, untapped opportunity.

00:08:13: And speaking of skills, I saw this fascinating trend from Alex Smith about pure storage.

00:08:17: Yes.

00:08:18: This is so smart.

00:08:19: Their new top partner tier, the ambassador tier, requires partners to be certified in other tech programs.

00:08:25: So to be a top partner for pure storage, you also have to be an expert in like... NVIDIA or Red Hat.

00:08:31: Exactly.

00:08:32: It creates what he calls programmatic connectors.

00:08:35: Pure is basically saying our product doesn't live in a vacuum.

00:08:39: To be a top partner for us, you have to understand the whole solution stack.

00:08:42: It forces them to be solution sellers.

00:08:44: That's brilliant.

00:08:45: And we saw similar noises from Red Hat and IBM too.

00:08:48: Both Simon Mead and Karim Yousaf were talking about simplicity, predictability, profitability.

00:08:53: It's all about stripping out the complexity for twenty twenty six.

00:08:56: The old complicated programs are just too slow.

00:08:59: for today's market.

00:09:00: Which brings us to our fourth lightning round theme, AI and operational efficiency.

00:09:06: How are Pyrton is keeping up with all this?

00:09:08: Well, Alexi Matlar's advice is to use context-driven AI.

00:09:12: like custom GPTs, to automate all the busy work.

00:09:15: The QBR decks, the follow-up emails.

00:09:17: All of it.

00:09:17: So you can actually focus on being a reliable partner instead of an admin.

00:09:20: And Russell Bradley Cook had that amazing demo of cross-beams cloud connectors.

00:09:24: Oh, this stat was incredible.

00:09:26: He took a task that took forty-seven minutes, all that manual research, pivot tables, overlap analysis,

00:09:32: and turned it into a two-minute conversation with AI.

00:09:35: Forty-seven minutes down to two.

00:09:37: If you're not using tools like that, you're just falling behind.

00:09:40: For

00:09:40: sure.

00:09:40: And that time you save should be spent talking to a human, which is our final theme, partner marketing strategy.

00:09:48: Right, because all the AI in the world doesn't matter if your story's wrong.

00:09:52: Christina Carsonson and Orlando Munoz were really clear on this.

00:09:56: Christina talks about the dark funnel, showing up much earlier with stories, not spec sheets.

00:10:02: Way earlier.

00:10:03: before the customer even really knows what they're looking for.

00:10:05: And then when you do get that meeting, Orlando Munoz has what he calls the thirty second test.

00:10:10: Yeah, I like this one.

00:10:11: Can your sellers answer why now and why us in thirty seconds?

00:10:16: And if they can't,

00:10:17: then your enablement has failed.

00:10:19: Simple as that.

00:10:20: And Ricky Currier wrapped it up by saying the partner marketer's role has to change too.

00:10:24: Yeah, they need to be the CMO of a partner's business, not just a campaign executor.

00:10:29: They have to own the strategy.

00:10:31: So If we look back on all of this, it feels like we've seen a real shift from, you know, relationships and influence to marketplaces and hard math.

00:10:41: It's the industry growing up.

00:10:42: We're moving out of the handshake era and into the integrated ecosystem era.

00:10:47: It's more demanding for sure, but the potential upside is just so much higher.

00:10:51: The free lunch is definitely over, but the bank was just getting started if you know what to

00:10:55: say.

00:10:56: That's a great way to put

00:10:57: it.

00:10:57: So here's a final thought for you to take away.

00:10:59: If your CEO walked into your office right now and asked for your win rate, lift number, would you have an answer?

00:11:05: Or would you start talking about portal logins?

00:11:08: Something to think about.

00:11:09: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two watts.

00:11:12: Also check out our other editions on account based marketing, field marketing, AI and B to B marketing, MarTech, go to market and social selling.

00:11:20: Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe for the next deep dive into the changing world of B to B marketing.

00:11:25: See you then.