Best of LinkedIn: Channel Marketing CW 09/ 10

00:00:00: This deep dive is provided by Thomas Hall Geyer and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about channel marketing in calendar weeks nine and ten.

00:00:08: 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: which honestly perfectly tease up our mission for today.

00:00:25: yeah

00:00:26: it really does.

00:00:26: we are pulling apart channel marketing trends that have surfaced across LinkedIn over the last two weeks.

00:00:33: And we're seeing this fundamental restructuring of how companies actually go to market together,

00:00:40: right?

00:00:43: You already know the ground is shifting under your feet right

00:00:45: now.

00:00:45: Oh, absolutely!

00:00:46: So the goal for this deep dive... ...is to extract the most crucial actionable insights from the smartest folks operating in this space.

00:00:54: We're filtering out all that noise so you could take these specific mechanics and apply them directly to your own go-to market strategies

00:01:01: without feeling totally overwhelmed which is key

00:01:04: exactly.

00:01:05: we've taken the insights from calendar weeks nine and ten broken down into four core themes And the first major shift we're seeing is that ecosystem thinking is actively replacing traditional channel models.

00:01:18: Yeah,

00:01:19: We are moving away from those linear top-down reseller structures toward genuine ecosystem value creation

00:01:27: Right.

00:01:28: And it requires a completely different operational mindset.

00:01:30: Pablo Hano actually laid this out recently, breaking down the structural differences between managing traditional distribution channel and orchestrating true ecosystem...

00:01:40: Because they're not that same thing?

00:01:42: Not

00:01:42: at all!

00:01:42: In a traditional Channel The Flow is super linear.

00:01:45: It's vendor to distributor to reseller end customer Just straight line of transaction.

00:01:50: But an ecosystem model is a network.

00:01:52: It's about multiple partners converging around a single customer problem to create this joint value that honestly, none of them could deliver in isolation

00:02:00: which sounds amazing and theory.

00:02:02: but when you look at how most companies actually manage their partners they're still totally stuck In That Linear Mindset.

00:02:09: Kyle E had A Really Fascinating Critique Of This.

00:02:11: Oh

00:02:12: The Digital Graveyard Post.

00:02:13: Yes

00:02:14: He Mentioned That Companies Will List Two Hundred Partners On A Portal put out a press release and proudly declare they have an ecosystem, but he called those portals digital graveyards.

00:02:24: It's so accurate because the issue is what these portals are built to optimize?

00:02:30: Kyle pointed out that traditional partner portals optimize for administration.

00:02:33: Right, just paperwork.

00:02:35: Exactly they're built to store static PDF battle cards process deal registrations maybe manage compliance documents.

00:02:42: But a true ecosystem needs to optimize for velocity and joint value creation.

00:02:47: Yeah when you build a system Just-to-manage paperwork You don't get collaboration?

00:02:51: one

00:02:54: hundred and fifty signed partner agreements, but only twelve of them are actively generating revenue or pipeline.

00:03:05: You

00:03:05: don't have an ecosystem?

00:03:06: Right you?

00:03:07: just a contact list with legal agreements attached.

00:03:10: That is terrifying metric for our partner marketing leader to look at.

00:03:14: One hundred thirty eight dormant partners means massive amount wasted on boarding resources Huge

00:03:20: waste!

00:03:21: So if the traditional portal and standard partner structures were broken what replaces?

00:03:26: Because we can't just delete the portal and hope for the best.

00:03:29: No,

00:03:29: We have to completely restructure the incentives And the tiering.

00:03:33: Chad Kaiser presented this radical approach that dismantles The traditional revenue-based tiering system.

00:03:40: Historically companies use gold silver and bronze tiers Based entirely on how much Revenue a partner brings in

00:03:46: Which usually results In partners chasing some arbitrary revenue number To keep their margins instead of focusing on the customer.

00:03:53: Precisely, so Kaiser replaced that old model with motion-based tiers.

00:03:58: he broke it into three distinct categories.

00:04:00: Tier one is influence.

00:04:02: These are the partners who shape the buying decisions and guide the strategy, even if they never process a single transaction.

00:04:08: Okay well...

00:04:09: Tier two is co-sell where partners are in their room with your sales team sharing accountability for the deal.

00:04:15: And tier three is resell Where the partner owns the customer relationship and the transaction entirely.

00:04:21: That makes

00:04:21: so much more sense And Kaiser argued that each of these tiers requires A fundamentally different program Different enablement and totally different marketing support.

00:04:31: You can't just give the Influence Partners a watered down version of your resell

00:04:35: program.".

00:04:36: I want to look at that from the B-to-B Marketing perspective for a second though, because tracking influence is notoriously difficult compared to logging a reseller transaction How should a marketing team actually evaluate a partner in this kind of

00:04:49: model?

00:04:50: That's where Leela Koopal offered A Great Lens.

00:04:53: She argues we need to stop evaluating partners solely by looking at a dashboard of past closed one revenue.

00:04:59: Right, instead We should classify them by how they expand your sales capacity right now.

00:05:04: Are they helping?

00:05:04: Your reps open net new enterprise accounts?

00:05:07: are they improving your win rates against the specific competitor?

00:05:10: because revenue just shows They participated in the past

00:05:13: Exactly doesn't prove their expanding.

00:05:15: you're true sales footprint In the market today

00:05:17: which means marketing has to step up and actually fund these ecosystem motions differently.

00:05:23: Alana Zapp brought up a point here that I think every marketer listening needs to internalize.

00:05:29: She noted, leadership funds what gets promoted.

00:05:33: Think about major product launch at typical B-to-B company Marketing throws massive budget at it.

00:05:39: Dedicated landing pages paid social PR pushes Webinar series.

00:05:43: What happens when they launch new strategic partnership?

00:05:46: They get logo added the website footer Maybe one joint press release if they're lucky?

00:05:50: Yeah, it's wild.

00:05:52: Alaina's point was that If marketing doesn't treat the partner ecosystem with same measurement visibility and promotional weight as a core product line The Partner team is doomed They'll spend half their year just trying to convince their own executive leadership That channel actually works.

00:06:06: The Ecosystem has be treated As primary growth engine Fully backed by Marketing budget

00:06:11: Absolutely Which naturally brings us To our second theme for today.

00:06:16: Co-Sell becomes this central Growth Motion.

00:06:18: We're moving from the high-level ecosystem structure down to ground level execution.

00:06:23: Right, where theory actually hits the pipeline and this is specifically when we look at co-selling with hyperscalers.

00:06:30: you know The massive cloud infrastructure providers like AWS Microsoft Azure Google Cloud.

00:06:36: Co selling is definitely the buzzword right now But there's a huge gap between wanting to cosel And executing joint motion with giant like AWS

00:06:45: Huge Gap.

00:06:46: Dahani Pallihippitya addressed this friction directly.

00:06:49: She pointed out that co-selling completely fails without absolute top down sponsorship

00:06:54: from the very top.

00:06:55: Yeah, why is that executive alignment so critical?

00:06:58: Why can't a partner marketing team just run this quietly on their own?

00:07:01: because Co selling requires changing the fundamental behavior of your direct sales team.

00:07:06: If your CEO, head of sales and marketing aren't entirely aligned on co-selling as a primary strategic priority it just becomes side project.

00:07:15: And the direct reps will ignore that.

00:07:16: Totally!

00:07:17: They'll ignore because its slows down their standard motion.

00:07:20: Delaney stressed that you product has to be natively partner ready... ...and your marketing narrative have speak the partners language not only yours own.

00:07:28: Let's talk about the enablement side of that narrative.

00:07:31: If marketing creates this massive comprehensive playbook for how to co-sell with Microsoft, do The Reps actually use it?

00:07:39: Not if its broad!

00:07:40: Alexander J. Buckle shared a really sharp insight on why most Co-Sell enablement fails.

00:07:46: Broad playbooks are ignored by account executives because they're too generic to apply to a live deal, right?

00:07:52: If you want a Co-Cell strategy game traction your Playbook needs to be hyper narrow.

00:07:56: He called it designing for us segment of one

00:07:59: Segment of One.

00:08:00: I love that.

00:08:00: yeah

00:08:01: the enablement material should be written For one exact type of sales rep targeting one exact buyer persona at one specific moment in The Deal Cycle.

00:08:09: But even with hyper narrow playbooks and top-down support, building a co-sell engine seems incredibly slow.

00:08:16: I hear companies launch a partnership run it for a quarter And then just pull the plug because it didn't generate immediate pipeline.

00:08:22: How long does this actually take

00:08:24: to work?

00:08:25: John you recently shared some compelling data on this exact timeline.

00:08:29: He watches company's try coselling get zero inbound leads For three months and then publicly declare that The model is broken

00:08:36: which Crazy premature.

00:08:38: Totally, his data reveals that for top performing ecosystem companies CoCell takes six to twelve months of consistent grinding effort before the inbound returns actually start flowing.

00:08:49: Six-to-twelve

00:08:50: months

00:08:50: Yeah It requires spending physical time at the partners offices educating their overlay teams and deep account mapping.

00:08:57: That timeline is a massive insight for UB to be marketers listening right now.

00:09:02: If it takes six to twelve months for a co-sell motion to yield inbound returns, marketing cannot expect immediate MQLs from the new partner launch.

00:09:10: It means marketing's job is build twelve month air cover campaigns...to keep your brand top of mind within the partners ecosystem while sales reps do all that grinding groundwork.

00:09:20: That Is The Exact Strategic Alignment Required.

00:09:23: And to shorten that painful initial learning curve, Murray Clark offered a brutal but brilliant piece of advice for companies struggling with their early AWS deals.

00:09:33: What did he say?

00:09:34: He noted that companies routinely underinvest in their first few opportunities by assigning their average sales reps.

00:09:44: But Clark's advice is to assign your absolute best, most lethal sales talent To you.

00:09:49: first two or three co-sell deals.

00:09:51: You have to treat those initial deals with a hyperscaler like an audition.

00:09:55: Oh that makes sense.

00:09:56: If an AWS rep brings into the deal and your average rep fungals it... ...you will likely never get second swing again.

00:10:03: So if company commits budget, builds air cover puts their best reps on the deals And grinds out six to twelve month timeline What does the actual payoff look like?

00:10:13: Is it worth all that operational

00:10:15: friction?".

00:10:15: The data suggests the upside is staggering.

00:10:18: Chris Groose shared stats regarding early engagement with AWS.

00:10:23: When a software vendor in AWS engaged together at the very start of a deal, rather than bringing their partner into the final hour they experienced forty percent faster sales cycles and twenty-seven percent higher close rates.

00:10:36: Wait I also saw he mentioned eighty percent larger deals sizes on those early engagement scenarios.

00:10:42: Eighty percent seems almost too high to be sustainable.

00:10:46: Is that premium just because they're naturally targeting larger enterprise accounts when a hyperscaler is involved?

00:10:51: Or does the co-sell motion actually expand?

00:10:55: It's a combination.

00:10:56: Hyperscalers naturally operate in enterprise environments, but the deal size expands because you're suddenly solving a much larger architectural problem for the client rather than just selling a point solution and Eric Medj has provided crucial context on how leaders achieve these numbers.

00:11:11: The company is actually moving the needle.

00:11:13: aren't broadly expanding their partner base to anyone who will sign a paper.

00:11:17: They are narrowing their focus deliberately quality

00:11:19: over quantity

00:11:20: exactly.

00:11:21: they prioritize high-fit partners with undeniable product synergy and operationalize that co-sell motion from day one.

00:11:28: Majetsi posed a great benchmark challenge, can you defend your top five alliances with real revenue impact data in under five minutes?

00:11:35: If not...your focus is too

00:11:37: broad.".

00:11:38: That leads us directly into team three.

00:11:40: Marketplaces evolve to a primary channel route because once you nail the Co-Sell execution it fundamentally shifts how actual transaction takes place.

00:11:48: We're seeing cloud marketplaces evolve from just being software catalogs into the primary transactional route to enterprise budget.

00:11:55: This is arguably the most significant mechanical shift in BDB purchasing right now, The mechanics of how Enterprise Software's bought are getting entirely rewritten.

00:12:04: Roman Kersenov provided a brilliant analysis of the newly launched Claude Marketplace by Anthropic.

00:12:10: We all know Anthropik is an AI powerhouse, but what they're doing here is turning pre-committed AISPEN into brand new distribution channel for third party software!

00:12:19: Let's

00:12:19: break down how that actually works with The Listener... What exactly is a pre committed budget in this context and how does it reduce procurement friction?

00:12:28: Think about the cloud marketplace playbook from the last ten years.

00:12:32: AWS and Microsoft taught the market that if an enterprise commits to spending, say five million dollars on Azure infrastructure over three years, Microsoft will allow them to use a portion of that committed budget.

00:12:44: To buy third party sauce applications directly through the azure marketplace like

00:12:48: a cyber security tool or data platform

00:12:51: right and The enterprise buyer loves this because they are burning down an existing Budget commitment rather than going back in asking the CFO for net new software budget.

00:12:59: And it bypasses the nightmare of vendor onboarding Because the transaction happens on the microsoft or AWS paper.

00:13:05: Exactly!

00:13:06: Now, Anthropic is taking that exact same mechanic and applying it to AI commitments.

00:13:11: If an enterprise has committed millions to Anthropics for AI usage they can now spend their commitment on partner software like GitLab or Snowflake directly through the Claude Marketplace.

00:13:22: The route-to budget has become just as critical of a route to market

00:13:25: which means a BDB marketer doesn't just need to convince the buyer that their software is good.

00:13:30: They need to position their software as the best way to burn down the buyers.

00:13:34: existing Anthropic or AWS commit, That's a totally different value proposition completely

00:13:41: different

00:13:41: and it's not Just The new AI players optimizing this.

00:13:44: look at what Salesforce Is doing.

00:13:46: Roman Pelzel And Alex Smith analyzed A massive overhaul happening within sales forces consulting partner program.

00:13:52: They are actively dropping from one hundred and seventy different partner distinctions down to just twenty eight core outcome based competencies.

00:14:02: It's a massive pruning effort to highlight true specialization buyers or just exhausted by vendors claiming they can do everything.

00:14:09: but Pells will stress the point regarding the app exchange that connects directly back to the marketing team right?

00:14:13: The Salesforce App Exchange receives twenty three million annual views.

00:14:18: it is highly strategic go-to market asset.

00:14:21: Despite that volume, many partners still treat their app exchange listing like a basic IT task to be delegated.

00:14:30: In an era

00:14:45: where marketplaces algorithmically route buyers to solutions, the partners who invest in sharp highly differentiated positioning are ones that will actually surface to enterprise buyers.

00:14:56: But with all these complex mechanics navigating hyperscalar commits and optimizing app exchange algorithms automated routing is so easy to forget...who's signing this contract?

00:15:07: Jessica Chivos brought a much needed reality check to this entire marketplace conversation.

00:15:12: She really did, she reminded the industry that behind every complex multi-layered cloud marketplace deal BtoB is still fundamentally H toH human to human.

00:15:20: Her point was that a slick market place listing or clever budget routing mechanic doesn't close a complex renewal on its own.

00:15:27: It might remove procurement friction, but the best customer outcomes still rely on customers' success.

00:15:33: managers, sales engineers and marketing professionals obsessively focusing on their clients reality.

00:15:39: Deals get closed by real people navigating internal politics dealing with screaming kids in the background of Zoom calls building genuine trust Showing up with humanity matters just as much as optimizing the GTM playbook.

00:15:53: That requirement for human connection is actually the perfect segue to our fourth and final theme.

00:15:58: AI enters the partner sales in GTM stack.

00:16:01: We're finally moving past the philosophical hype phase of artificial intelligence, seeing highly practical workflow level applications within the partner ecosystem.

00:16:11: And navigating that transition sometimes requires admitting when initial assumptions were just wrong.

00:16:16: Craig Portnoy posted a very candid admission regarding AI & partnerships A year ago.

00:16:20: he believed AI was mostly a distraction for partnership leaders, just a shiny object taking focus away from relationship building.

00:16:27: Now he admits that he is entirely

00:16:28: wrong.".

00:16:29: He changed his stance because the technology finally caught up to operational bottlenecks.

00:16:34: Portnoy pointed out that average partner manager currently waste roughly fifty percent of their time on manual busy work.

00:16:42: They're manually entering deal registrations calculating complex commission structures and constantly updating overlap spreadsheets.

00:16:50: He recognized that AI is now completely capable of automating those specific repetitive tasks.

00:16:56: Which theoretically frees up half their week to actually do the human-to-human relationship building, but how does automation look in practice for a sales rep?

00:17:07: How did we get AI to use something useful without making it learn prompt engineering?

00:17:12: Will Taylor shared a beautifully simple, highly effective system for integrating AI into the daily sales motion.

00:17:18: It starts with partner overlap data.

00:17:21: He advises teams to use an account mapping tool like Crossbeam which allows you securely overlap your CRM data With a partner's CRM so see exactly what of target prospects are already working.

00:17:33: OK, so you know who the shared prospects are.

00:17:34: What's next step?

00:17:35: You layer

00:17:36: that cross-beam overlap data with your first party CRM data and then use an AI tool to draft initial outreach email.

00:17:44: but the brilliance of Taylor system is where this happens.

00:17:47: The AI reviews the data explains why the partner connection matters for specific prospect and drafts a context rich opening e-mail directly inside the reps existing workflow.

00:17:59: So the rep doesn't have open chat gpt Copy and paste data from three different tabs, and write some twenty-eight step prompt dissertation to get an email drafted.

00:18:08: Exactly!

00:18:09: It operates right within the CRM or the sales engagement platform they already have open.

00:18:13: it connects the dots that sellers simply do not have time to connect manually across hundreds of accounts And naturally references a real partner that the prospect already trusts.

00:18:22: Reduces the friction of co-selling down into single click.

00:18:25: That sounds incredibly efficient but brings up massive psychological hurdle.

00:18:30: What does this mean for the B-to-B marketing and enablement teams trying to roll these tools out?

00:18:35: If you buy this software, how do you ensure your people actually adopt it.

00:18:40: Cameron Halson closed off a conversation in calendar week ten with really profound human truth about AI adoption.

00:18:46: He stated very clearly that simply cannot force AI adoption.

00:18:50: You can't mandate curiosity Right!

00:18:52: if leadership just drops new AI tool into tech stack And says use is more efficient It usually backfires.

00:19:00: How come noted that AI adoption only sticks when the tool has deep undeniable relevance to employees' actual daily pressure points?

00:19:07: But more importantly, he highlighted environmental factor.

00:19:10: Psychological

00:19:11: safety.

00:19:11: Exactly!

00:19:12: He noted.

00:19:12: confidence with these new tools rarely grows in isolation.

00:19:16: It requires a safe environment where it is completely normal and acceptable for veteran sales rep or senior marketer To raise their hand at meeting and say I tried this AI workflow but don't understand how works And i am stuck.

00:19:28: can someone show me?

00:19:29: You cannot mandate digital transformation, but you can intentionally build the culture where it is safe to experiment and fail.

00:19:37: Making the technology accessible relevant and safe-to-stumble with... ...is the real work of GTM leadership right now.

00:19:44: We have covered a massive amount of strategic ground today from dismantling traditional tiering systems And replacing them with influence models To understanding the twelve month grind of co-sell execution.

00:19:55: We've looked at how AI commits are turning cloud marketplaces into new distribution channels, and how AI is finally integrating in to the daily workflows of partner managers.

00:20:04: And honestly it's just the beginning!

00:20:07: If you enjoyed this deep dive... New additions drop every two weeks.

00:20:11: Also check out our other editions on account-based marketing, field marketing, AIMB to B Marketing, Martech Go To Market & Social Selling.

00:20:19: Thank You so much for investing your time with us today.

00:20:21: Be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on the insights.

00:20:39: Ten years from now, will the most powerful partner in your ecosystem be a traditional software company?

00:20:45: Or will it an AI agent autonomously orchestrating co-sell motions identifying overlap and routing enterprise budgets before human ever even gets involved.