Best of LinkedIn: Channel Marketing & Partner Ecosystem CW 31/ 32

00:00:00: provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frenas, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about channel marketing in partner ecosystem.

00:00:06: In calendar weeks thirty one and thirty two.

00:00:09: Frens is a B to be market research company that supports enterprise marketing teams in unlocking the full potential of their customer data with the help of AI.

00:00:18: you can find more info in description.

00:00:20: Yeah, so welcome to this deep dive.

00:00:23: Imagine for a second realizing that ninety six percent of your revenue relies on external partners.

00:00:28: right but the systems you've actually built Make it.

00:00:31: So miserable for them To sell your product like sixty percent.

00:00:34: Your marketing budget just goes completely untouched

00:00:36: which is Just I mean That's an insane bottle like to have

00:00:38: Right?

00:00:39: It's totally broken.

00:00:41: today We're looking at why The B to be channel Is fundamentally breaking down and You know how top-tier marketing professionals are completely rewiring their partner ecosystems to fix it.

00:00:51: We've got a lot of top trends from across LinkedIn, to unpack here...

00:00:54: Yeah we're definitely going to unpack some major structural shifts today because looking at the data for these two weeks there's this massive unmistakable pivot happening.

00:01:03: Oh!

00:01:03: For sure

00:01:04: It is like the whole industry just woke up and decided that you know vanity metrics or huge liability.

00:01:09: we were moving away simply counting relationships like bragging about how many partners you've signed and pivoting hard toward demanding absolute proof of what those relationships actually produce.

00:01:20: It's a completely necessary correction, honestly we are seeing strategy marketplaces marketing funds in AI.

00:01:28: they're all sort of converging on this idea of proving tangible transactional value.

00:01:33: right

00:01:33: the hard proof.

00:01:34: exactly The days of signing a partner slapping their logo On your website And just calling it to win Those days officially over.

00:01:43: Which actually brings up this really fantastic point from a ServiceNow channel veteran.

00:01:46: we reviewed in the sources, they pointed out that this whole partner's signed metric is rapidly giving way to partners activated.

00:01:55: Yeah it was great post.

00:01:56: They basically drew line into sand and said look a partner isn't real until they have transacted.

00:02:01: It's harsh reality but I mean its an accurate one.

00:02:04: And there another twenty five year channel veteran who echo'd perfectly.

00:02:09: Oh, right about the attach rate.

00:02:10: Yes

00:02:11: exactly They argued that if they were forced to choose just one metric like Just One To evaluate a program they wouldn't Choose partner-sourced revenue and they definitely Wouldn't choose total partner count?

00:02:24: They would absolutely choose The Attach Rate.

00:02:26: Right

00:02:26: which makes A lot of sense If you think About it Like um...like a car dealership.

00:02:30: Okay yeah tracking with You

00:02:32: so Counting your partner signed is basically just counting how many people walk through the front doors and you know browse a lot, right?

00:02:39: It feels good.

00:02:40: it looks really busy but Foot traffic doesn't actually pay the bills.

00:02:44: The attach rate is knowing exactly how many of those browsers sit down buy a car and then add on the premium stereo, The Extended Warranty, the Maintenance Package.

00:02:54: Yeah exactly it's measuring the actual integrated value that's being generated there right?

00:02:59: And to push that dealership analogy even further...the old way of channel marketing was basically paying for the dealerships billboard and just hoping for the best

00:03:07: Just throwing money at awareness.

00:03:09: yeah

00:03:09: Right but..The new Way is Paying the Sales Person a Premium only when the customer drives the car off-the-lot with all those specific add

00:03:18: ons.

00:03:18: That makes total sense.

00:03:19: And we are seeing companies engineer their entire operational strategies around that kind of like rigorous value creation.

00:03:26: For example, there's a training platform mentioned in the post that developed a partner lifetime value model or PLV

00:03:32: Okay.

00:03:33: And across their network of, I think it was over three hundred partners in ninety plus countries they are explicitly targeting ten dollars in partner revenue for every one dollar the platform itself earns.

00:03:45: Wait!

00:03:45: Ten to One?

00:03:46: Yep!

00:03:46: Ten To One.

00:03:47: That is a massive multiplier to explicitly target like.

00:03:51: what does that actually look Like In practice For software company?

00:03:55: Well, it reflects the broader physics of the market right now.

00:03:58: The data shows that every single dollar of cloud technology sold today pulls roughly seven dollars in wraparound services revenue.

00:04:05: Wow!

00:04:06: Seven times the initial sale?

00:04:07: Right because as reseller margins on actual software licenses compress...the money just shifts…the project isn't in the initial sales of a cloud environment anymore

00:04:16: It's in all the other stuff.

00:04:17: Exactly, it is data migration and change management building custom API integrations And all managed services attached to it.

00:04:26: So if a program isn't capturing that seven-to one or ten-to-one multiplier... ...it just stalls out.

00:04:31: Which reminds me there was this phenomenon highlighted In discussions called The fifty million dollar plateau.

00:04:37: Oh yeah!

00:04:38: The brick wall

00:04:39: Right where partner programs hit a brick wall at fifty mil.

00:04:42: What is actually breaking mechanically at that level?

00:04:45: So when these programs hit the fifty million ceiling, there are five very specific culprits and it's almost never about a lack of partner effort.

00:04:53: Okay so what are they?

00:04:55: It's attribution breakdown non-scaling enablement ecosystem concentration, incentive drift and internal politics.

00:05:02: Wait hold on let's unpack a couple of those because they sound like great buzzwords but I know they absolutely destroy programs.

00:05:09: what does an attribution breakdown actually look like when you're at fifty million?

00:05:13: It's basically trying to split our restaurant check between fifty people When no one remembers What They Ordered And half the People Already Left.

00:05:20: Oh that sounds Like A Nightmare!

00:05:22: it is.

00:05:22: You have a direct sales rep...a sourcing partner an integration partner, and a cloud marketplace all claiming that they were the one who drove the deal.

00:05:32: Right The accounting takes longer than the actual sales motion And eventually partners just stop selling your product because getting paid is way too much of a headache.

00:05:41: Yeah That makes sense.

00:05:42: And then ecosystem concentration Just means you're eighty.

00:05:45: twenty rule has become like a nine fifty-five rule,

00:05:49: right?

00:05:50: You're relying almost entirely on just a handful of top performers so your risk is incredibly concentrated.

00:05:56: Yes and then you add in internal politics which usually means your direct sales team is actively fighting your channel partners over the exact same commission.

00:06:05: Oh!

00:06:05: So it's completely toxic cocktail

00:06:06: A very toxic cocktail.

00:06:08: plus you have major market shifts complicating the whole landscape.

00:06:12: look at Broadcoms ongoing VMware partner consolidation.

00:06:15: Yeah, that was a big topic in the sources.

00:06:16: It

00:06:17: is because that move is actively pushing customers away from their traditional setups and toward alternatives like OpenCloud, Rely Cloud ,and Microsoft Azure .

00:06:26: And buying behaviors are deeply entrenched in trust too which you just can't bypass.

00:06:31: yeah take the German middle stand buyers You know?

00:06:33: The mid-size manufacturing an enterprise sector over there.

00:06:36: right They still heavily prefer to route software purchases through a trusted local system house.

00:06:42: Yeah, rather than buying direct from some foreign vendor.

00:06:45: yeah.

00:06:45: and A System House being like a local highly-trusted IT integrator.

00:06:50: those German enterprises they don't want To buy an abstract cloud license From a company in California.

00:06:55: no

00:06:55: of course not.

00:06:56: they Want the local it firm?

00:06:58: They've crested for two decades.

00:06:59: yeah to vouch For it and physically install you have to partner with that trust architecture.

00:07:04: so if

00:07:04: The new rule of the game is the strict attach race, and you have to avoid that restaurant check nightmare of attribution at all costs.

00:07:13: Where's the safest place to actually track

00:07:15: this?

00:07:16: Not on spreadsheets.

00:07:17: I'll tell ya that.

00:07:17: Definitely

00:07:18: not spreadsheets which brings us into massive migration we're seeing toward hyperscaler marketplaces.

00:07:23: Yes!

00:07:24: The

00:07:24: hypers scalers your Microsofts or AWS they are fundamentally rewiring how co-selling works.

00:07:29: It's

00:07:30: huge.

00:07:30: The biggest indicator here is Microsoft phasing out self-reported Azure IP, COSEL this fiscal year.

00:07:36: Right?

00:07:37: If you are an ISV and independent software vendor building tech on Azure, Microsoft is moving your qualifying deals strictly through their marketplace.

00:07:46: Okay so let me stop you there.

00:07:47: just pay devil's advocate for a second.

00:07:49: if Microsoft is forcing all Qualifying ISV deal Strictly Through Their Marketplace right?

00:07:56: doesn't that effectively make them A giant toll move?

00:07:59: I mean, yeah.

00:08:00: Like they dictate the environment?

00:08:02: They control terms and take their cut.

00:08:04: Is this actually about ecosystem efficiency or is it just monopolistic control?

00:08:09: It's a completely fair skepticism.

00:08:12: And yes, it absolutely centralizes their power.

00:08:14: but look at from the ecosystem perspective is the ultimate cure for that attribution breakdown we were just diagnosing

00:08:20: because its centralized?

00:08:21: exactly when a multi-party deal happens inside The Azure Marketplace there zero ambiguity about who influenced what or Who gets paid?

00:08:33: And

00:08:35: they are scaling this really aggressively.

00:08:37: Microsoft Marketplace multi-party private offers just expanded to Europe, Australia Japan and South Africa.

00:08:45: The sheer gravity of these hyperscaler ecosystems is just staggering To me like take Microsoft's five billion dollar investment in Anthropic.

00:08:53: Oh yeah that deal

00:08:55: That wasn't a friendly check.

00:08:56: They wrote... plus a three point two billion dollar quarterly equity gain for Microsoft.

00:09:07: It's wild!

00:09:08: They are leveraging their platform to practically guarantee downstream revenue

00:09:13: and it lifts the margins of the partners who align with that motion too, like Commvault.

00:09:17: CFO specifically credited these types of hyperscalar agreements for pushing their sauce gross margin to a staggering seventy-point six percent.

00:09:24: Seventy point

00:09:25: six percent?

00:09:26: Yep

00:09:26: which is up six point three five per cent year every year.

00:09:29: but how does selling through marketplace boost your Gross Margin?

00:09:31: That much?

00:09:32: Wouldn't marketplace fees eat into the margin?

00:09:34: You'd think so, but it dramatically lowers the customer acquisition cost.

00:09:38: Oh I see!

00:09:38: Yeah when you sell through AWS or Azure The end-customer is often just burning down their pre committed cloud spend anyway.

00:09:46: So the sales cycle's way faster...the procurement friction basically disappears and you aren't spending massive marketing dollars to acquire them in first place.

00:09:53: So the margins naturally follow Exactly.

00:09:56: And AWS moving exactly same.

00:09:59: Their partner of the year submissions, which were due August fourteenth by way are now being judged entirely on quantified customer outcomes.

00:10:08: Interesting yeah not on how many certifications a partners engineering team has completed.

00:10:13: again vanity metrics her out.

00:10:15: hard proof is in.

00:10:16: we're even seeing startups like Straker and solid core dot AI joining AWS startup program specifically to gain that co-sell alignment And get direct access to the marketplace.

00:10:26: That makes a lot of sense.

00:10:27: Yeah Hey, really quick before we transition to how companies are actually enabling partners

00:10:49: This is where the system seems completely broken.

00:11:00: It's

00:11:00: severely broken.

00:11:02: Informa Tech Target and Sherpa just launched a new partner demand assurance program, And The Catalyst for it Is A Statistic That Should Honestly Be A Wake-Up Call For Every Channel Chief Out There.

00:11:13: Oh I saw this stat in sources and was genuinely baffled by them.

00:11:17: They found that ninety six percent of IT deals are Partner Influenced.

00:11:22: Yet sixty percent Of MDF Market Development Funds Goes Totally Unspent.

00:11:27: Yeah, sixty percent.

00:11:28: How is that even mathematically possible?

00:11:30: Like if ninety-six percent of your revenue relies on partners how do you manage to leave sixty percent free marketing money meant for those partners just sitting at the table?

00:11:40: I

00:11:40: know it sounds completely absurd.

00:11:41: until you map out a modern buyer journey partner experience no longer just handshake in lunch and learn seminar.

00:11:47: The analysis highlights that BDB Journey has now measured across twenty eight distinct buying moments.

00:11:52: Wait!

00:11:53: Twenty Eight.

00:11:53: What does a Buying Moment actually look like this context?

00:11:56: Think about the modern procurement process.

00:11:59: A buyer has to run a security audit, right?

00:12:01: Sure They need to spin up a sandbox environment To test this software.

00:12:05: they evaluate API documentation... ...they run compliance checks.

00:12:09: Oh I see.

00:12:09: So if your legacy MDF process requires a partner to submit like paper receipts for golf outing But what the partner actually needs is funding to host a highly technical digital security workshop they just won't use the funds.

00:12:23: So, the funds are trapped behind outdated requirements that don't match how software is actually bought today?

00:12:29: Precisely!

00:12:30: The administrative friction of claiming money totally outweighs reward and that friction is why partner experience management is evolving into what's now called revenue channel intelligence.

00:12:40: Revenue Channel Intelligence Yeah

00:12:41: you need.

00:12:42: dynamic intelligence directly shapes how MDF is allocated How partners are tiered And how rebates are structured based on actual behavior not legacy templates.

00:12:52: And when it comes to the marketing content partners are given, It really all comes back to trust.

00:12:56: Oh absolutely!

00:12:57: Martiner

00:12:58: Marketing only builds Trust When it demonstrates a genuine understanding of this shared audience... ...it can't just be a shiny vendor branded brochure about a joint solution.

00:13:08: Right nobody reads those

00:13:09: Exactly..It has to speak To end users actual operational pain points.

00:13:15: When you remove that friction and actually align the content, The scale you can achieve is incredible.

00:13:22: There's a success story.

00:13:23: we reviewed of a partner marketing function That started with just five partners Just Five And by dialing in this exact alignment they scaled to thousands worldwide.

00:13:33: They now drive thirty-five percent Of all sourced revenue for their company.

00:13:38: But to get those kinds of results, you really have to cultivate at a real community.

00:13:42: You can't just treat partners like outsourced lead generators.

00:13:45: No

00:13:46: not at all.

00:13:46: The momentum there is building.

00:13:48: actually the partner marketing collective closed its first season delivering ten editions with eleven different industry contributors.

00:13:56: And critically, that community building is happening physically too.

00:14:00: It validates the need for genuine human connection like The Austin Partnerships Community recently gathered at Zilker Brewing Company ahead of the Partnership Leaders Catalyst Conference.

00:14:11: Oh nice!

00:14:12: Yeah and At ChannelCon in San Diego GTIA was actively positioning itself as an emerging ecosystem orchestrator.

00:14:20: Also at ChannelCon, there was the Women in The Channel Leadership Breakfast which brought leaders from Barracuda and Ingram together to discuss mentorship and trust.

00:14:29: Love that!

00:14:29: It's a great reminder.

00:14:31: even as everything moves toward these highly digitized hyper-tracked marketplaces... ...the human element like actual trust between two partners is still bedrock.

00:14:40: that makes tech work.

00:14:42: But it leaves us at really fascinating crossroads.

00:14:45: How so?

00:14:46: Well, you have this vital human element right but You are also dealing with twenty eight complex digital buying moments thousands of partners globally and Millions in MDF.

00:14:56: that needs dynamic routing.

00:14:58: Oh I see where you're going.

00:14:59: Yeah, you simply cannot manage that complexity manually.

00:15:01: not a chance.

00:15:02: You'd need an army of spreadsheet wranglers And they still be way too slow

00:15:07: exactly which

00:15:08: perfectly leads us into the final piece Of this puzzle ecosystem platforms and AI native partnerships Because scaling with AI isn't just a luxury anymore.

00:15:17: It is literally the only way to survive this rigorous new environment.

00:15:22: AI is completely mechanizing the enablement process right now, take Amazon Quick Spaces as prime example.

00:15:28: they had traditional forty page partner playbook and open read on.

00:15:32: it was a dismal

00:15:35: three percent.

00:15:36: I mean, no one wants to read a four-page PDF To figure out how to sell the product.

00:15:40: So they converted it into an interactive AI interface.

00:15:43: Engagement skyrocketed to sixty seven percent from a

00:15:46: three percent open rate to sixty Seven percent engagement.

00:15:49: That's because instead of a static document just sitting in the digital drawer somewhere, it became a conversational problem-solving tool.

00:15:55: Exactly!

00:15:56: And partner platforms themselves are becoming autonomous too.

00:15:58: Inpartner's Autonomous Ecosystem Platform which integrates deeply with AWS, Microsoft and TDSYNX is reportedly cutting deal close times by an impressive forty two percent.

00:16:08: Forty two percent faster?

00:16:10: Think about the mechanics of that reduction.

00:16:12: It's massive.

00:16:13: Instead of a partner spending like three days trading emails with a vendor to check distributor inventory, register a deal and get margin approval.

00:16:21: The AI just cross references the partners CRM data TDSYNX is live inventory And Microsoft's current pricing.

00:16:28: instantly

00:16:29: it completely removes the human bottleneck.

00:16:32: an AWS Is doing the exact same thing?

00:16:34: AWS partner central agents are now able to qualify every single co-sell opportunity in real time An immediately routed to the right engagement motion.

00:16:43: We're also seeing major structural alliances forming just to push this forward.

00:16:47: Cursor recently launched its first partner program called Benchmark Partners and they did not start small.

00:16:53: No, They didn't.

00:16:54: The founding members are heavyweights AWS Boston Consulting Group Databricks McKinsey NVIDIA & Snowflake.

00:17:00: It's all about putting the ecosystem data directly inside of AI tools people already using Like Sugar for instance!

00:17:07: They became a native connector inside both Chad GPT and Claude.

00:17:10: Oh wow

00:17:11: Yeah, which means marketplace insights and co-sell data are instantly accessible right where partners are already doing their daily workflow.

00:17:18: They don't even have to log into a separate portal.

00:17:20: That's huge but the strategy has to align with the technology.

00:17:24: Boston Consulting Group released research finding that the strongest generative AI returns come specifically when you align your partner strategy With Your Technology Raidmap.

00:17:35: Oh that makes sense.

00:17:35: yeah

00:17:36: if your partner team And your product engineering Team or siloed You just lose.

00:17:41: But as with any really powerful technology, we have to talk about the vulnerabilities here.

00:17:46: Yeah!

00:17:46: We do

00:17:47: because AI isn't just empowering good guys.

00:17:50: There is a very dark side to this automation boom.

00:17:53: It's

00:17:53: critical warning for anyone managing these programs.

00:17:56: AI built fake publisher sites are now systematically passing standard affiliate vetting checks.

00:18:01: This is massive risk, just think about what that actually means.

00:18:05: Bad actors using bots generate highly realistic looking tech blogs and review sites

00:18:10: Yeah completely fake sites

00:18:12: And they're specifically designed to capture affiliate cookies and siphon off commission revenue.

00:18:17: If you were B-to-B marketer relying blindly on automated vetting processes to approve new partners, you could literally be paying out marketing funds to a bot

00:18:26: farm.

00:18:26: It's scary.

00:18:27: as we automate trust and verification the bad actors are just automating deception okay?

00:18:33: And it brings us full circle to why those vanity metrics are so dangerous.

00:18:38: if your only measuring partner signed or clicks generated these AI fake publishers look like top performers.

00:18:44: Oh, that's such a good point.

00:18:46: they look amazing on paper.

00:18:47: But if you demand the attach rate If you demand actual proof of a transacting customer who physically deploys this software The bots are instantly exposed.

00:18:56: human oversight and rigorous outcome based metrics or just more critical than ever.

00:19:01: So we've walked through the Death of Vanity metrics and The Rise Of The Strict Detach Rate, yep!

00:19:05: We have looked at absolute dominance of hyperscalar marketplaces curing the attribution breakdown...we covered a bizarre reality of sixty percent unspent MDF in highly influenced markets due to outdated friction

00:19:18: which is still crazy for me

00:19:19: right?

00:19:20: And finally the double-edged sword AI scaling the whole ecosystem.

00:19:24: The landscape just requires a completely different level of rigor than it did even two years ago.

00:19:29: It really does, and uh...it actually leaves me with one final thought for you to mull over today.

00:19:34: Let's hear it!

00:19:35: With absolutely everything moving toward these AI-driven marketplaces These twenty eight complex digital buying moments And highly rigorous transaction based tracking What actually happens to a long tail of smaller niche

00:19:51: partners?

00:19:51: Oh, that's great question.

00:19:53: Like

00:19:53: the boutique integrators who simply don't have this sophisticated tech stack or capital to plug into these advanced APIs are B-to-B ecosystems about become highly gated communities reserved exclusively for ultra integrated and ultra funded?

00:20:06: That is

00:20:07: pivotal right now.

00:20:08: I mean barrier entry has never been higher even if operational rewards for those across it are astronomical.

00:20:14: Definitely something keep close eye on as the space evolves.

00:20:17: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:20:21: also check out our other editions on field marketing, MarTech AI and B to be go-to market ABM and social selling.

00:20:28: thank you so much for joining us with a steep dive.

00:20:30: don't forget to hit subscribe.