Best of LinkedIn: Channel Marketing & Partner Ecosystem CW 35/ 36

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

00:00:06: In calendar weeks, thirty five and thirty six.

00:00:09: Frenes 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.

00:00:17: you can find more info in the description.

00:00:20: so welcome today's deep dive.

00:00:22: we are really excited.

00:00:23: get into this one.

00:00:24: yeah We've got great lineup today.

00:00:26: And just to set expectations early, this deep dive is custom curated specifically for you the strategic B-to-B marketing professional.

00:00:33: We are unpacking the absolute top channel marketing and partner ecosystem trends that are actively being discussed debated and really just dissected across LinkedIn right now

00:00:43: Exactly, and you know there's no fluff today.

00:00:45: No textbook definitions of what a partner is.

00:00:48: You already know the landscape.

00:00:49: so we're just going to jump straight into where The most massive structural shifts in partner monetization are happening right now.

00:00:54: Which means?

00:00:55: We have to start with the hyperscalar ecosystems.

00:00:57: I mean we were talking about the transition from What used to be A very Very warm and fuzzy relationship management exercise Into hard-dollar measurable revenue channels.

00:01:08: Right it's a total rewiring Of how these ecosystems actually make money.

00:01:12: Honestly, it's the sheer speed of this shift that is catching so many go-to market teams completely off guard.

00:01:18: Oh hundred percent!

00:01:19: Yeah Roman Kirsanov recently published an analysis on this and he really quantified that acceleration.

00:01:25: He looked at the time.

00:01:26: It takes software companies to hit the one billion dollar mark in marketplace sales

00:01:30: a billion dollars.

00:01:31: That used to be a lifetime achievement for a sauce company.

00:01:34: seriously And Roman pointed out that for the twenty sixteen cohorts, so companies like Dynatrace it took roughly eight to ten years from their first listing.

00:01:42: To hit that billion dollar milestone.

00:01:44: but if you look at the twenty-twenty three two twenty four cohort players like Salesforce and ServiceNow they're hitting one billion or in sales versus case even two billion dollars.

00:01:54: Wow yeah!

00:01:55: They are doing just one and a half to two years.

00:01:57: It's just wild.

00:01:58: The obvious question anyone listening is What is the underlying mechanism driving that massive compression in time?

00:02:07: It's not just at the software magically got ten times better, right.

00:02:10: No it's economics.

00:02:11: exactly over that exact same period Marketplace take rates Just plummeted.

00:02:17: The old hyperscaler fee structures they used to hover around what like fifteen to twenty percent of the transaction

00:02:22: was deep.

00:02:23: But

00:02:23: today, those fees have dropped to roughly one point five two three percent.

00:02:27: The hyperscalars basically realized that capturing sheer transaction volume.

00:02:31: just creating gravity for their own cloud ecosystems is vastly more valuable than trying to squeeze margin out of every individual software sale

00:02:39: and that fee reduction acts as this massive accelerant.

00:02:42: buyers had these huge cloud consumption commitments you know pre-committed spend with AWS or Azure And they are highly motivated to burn down those commitments by buying third party software through the marketplace.

00:02:53: The friction is essentially gone, zeroed out.

00:02:55: Which makes the channel incredibly enticing for marketers.

00:02:59: but there's a very real danger here of just blindly chasing these hyperscaler platforms because this scale so massive that temptation to throw all your budget right at it.

00:03:11: Vanity badge hunt!

00:03:13: It really is.

00:03:14: Harry Blakemore and Stacy Floyd both actually warned about this exact thing recently.

00:03:18: they were pointing how many teams waste time pursuing AWS tier badges just for the sake of putting a shiny logo on a slide

00:03:28: deck.

00:03:28: Yeah, The reality those tiers is actually pretty brutal.

00:03:31: if your organization can't realistically hit the advanced tier within twelve to eighteen months I mean meaning you don't have the dedicated headcount or the deep certification budget Or that customer references You are far better off leaning on a distributor

00:03:44: because the distributors already Have the trusted field relationships right?

00:03:48: Exactly.

00:03:48: They have the marketplace visibility that you would spend years and millions of dollars trying to build from scratch, setting up these unactivated programs like filing a co-sell registration that just gets ignored and never touched again... it isn't just neutral!

00:04:02: It's an active waste of time and

00:04:04: focus.".

00:04:04: And the crazy part is… The structural choices you make early on can actually permanently lock out your future revenue?

00:04:11: Yousaf Ali highlighted this critical detail about the Microsoft Marketplace that trips up a lot of partners.

00:04:17: Not the offer types?

00:04:18: Yes,

00:04:18: when you publish an offer ,you have to select and offer type And alot teams treat it like picking a font for PDF.

00:04:25: They just pick one so they can click Publish & Get It Live.

00:04:28: But That Offer Type Cannot Be Changed After Publication And It Permanently Dictates Your Access To Microsoft's Incentive Capital

00:04:35: Which is A Phenomenal Example Of How An Administrative Decision Suddenly Becomes A Huge Strategic Bottle Neck.

00:04:41: He noted that certain funding programs, like Frontier Accelerate Engagements which subsidize heavy customer migrate and modernized projects.

00:04:49: They can reach up to a hundred seventy five thousand dollars in co-investment.

00:04:53: That's

00:04:53: real money.

00:04:54: It is massive But your team only gets access to the capital if you selected the precise correct offer type on day one.

00:05:01: It's wild, and it really reinforces this broader philosophical shift that Raceberry mentioned.

00:05:07: A Microsoft partnership or any hyperscaler relationship has to be treated as a dedicated go-to market channel—it is not aside project but needs a dedicated owner with quota, measurable targets…and just strict operational

00:05:22: cadence.".

00:05:27: Aren't we letting ourselves off the hook a bit?

00:05:30: How so.

00:05:30: Well,

00:05:31: we spend all this time critiquing the rigid rules of the hyperscalars but our partners simply ignoring the tools and intelligence already sitting in their own portals.

00:05:40: Vince Mencien recently had a conversation with Alexandra Zagori from Microsoft And she openly referred to partner telemetry as they're best kept secret.

00:05:48: Oh

00:05:48: right Because Microsoft is actively piping all this data directly into the partner portals, it literally tells them exactly which joint customer is spiking in usage or what specific offer they should pitch next.

00:06:00: Exactly!

00:06:01: It tells them precisely when a renewal conversation needs to happen.

00:06:05: yet The utilization rate of that data by partners Is shockingly low?

00:06:09: Its like their flying blind while instrument panel is completely lit up with warnings and directions.

00:06:14: Right...The

00:06:15: industry loves talking about Moving toward partner led growth,

00:06:19: but

00:06:20: you fundamentally cannot lead a market motion if your own sellers are just ignoring the telemetry being handed right to them.

00:06:26: That's such a fair point.

00:06:28: But you know, there is a dark side to all this velocity.

00:06:31: When marketplace deals are moving this fast and you've got telemetry firing off signals left-and right tracking who actually drove the revenue becomes a total nightmare for the CFO.

00:06:41: Oh attributionism mess?

00:06:42: Total mess!

00:06:43: And before we dive into exactly how top teams are fixing that measurement gap take a quick second to subscribe to This Deep Dive Right Now on whatever platform your listening On.

00:06:52: We curate these insights specifically so You don't have To sift through.

00:06:56: The noise ensures you just never miss a future edition.

00:07:00: Definitely hit subscribe, because look all of that massive hyperscaler scale we were talking about is utterly useless if your marketing and partner teams cannot actually prove to the chief revenue officer these relationships are generating net new cash!

00:07:14: Right

00:07:15: this where the rubber meets.

00:07:18: Rob Moyer and Delia Janssen both zeroed in on this massive disconnect that happens inside quarterly business reviews.

00:07:24: Partner teams routinely walk into a QBR, present a slide deck entirely focused.

00:07:30: Yeah, they highlight how many new partners.

00:07:33: They recruited this quarter or How Many technical training sessions?

00:07:36: They hosted Or just the sheer volume of registered deals.

00:07:39: It's an entire narrative built on co-sell activities.

00:07:43: But the CEOs and the CRO sitting across a table that do not care about The effort they are graded On outcomes show me the money.

00:07:49: right they want to see Co closed metrics.

00:07:51: yeah did This specific partnership actually accelerated deal cycle?

00:07:55: Did it bring in a logo we never could have reached direct?

00:07:58: did increase the average contract value?

00:08:00: CoSell is just the process, but co-close as the financial reality.

00:08:04: And Von Mornekei echoed this sentiment perfectly.

00:08:07: He pointed out that partner organizations will never get an equal respected seat at their revenue table if they insist on speaking a foreign language.

00:08:15: Yeah you have to speak out of market.

00:08:17: If the rest of the organization, marketing direct sales customer success.

00:08:21: if they're rigorously debating pipeline coverage and customer acquisition costs The partner team cannot just walk in talking about subjective partner engagement scores.

00:08:31: They will get laughed out of room.

00:08:32: Yeah!

00:08:33: They have to present hard financial levers And that means tracking partner-sourced ARR, so annual recurring revenue directly originated by the ecosystem.

00:08:43: Yes!

00:08:44: It means comparing the SAC—the customer acquisition cost on your indirect channels versus your direct sales motion to actually prove that the partner route is more efficient and it requires showing net revenue retention lift.

00:08:56: you have to prove that customers who are wrapped in a partner service ecosystem actually renew at higher rates ensure less

00:09:02: which makes total sense.

00:09:03: translating ecosystem value into financial reality sounds great in theory But the infrastructure most teams use to actually do that is completely broken.

00:09:13: Kyle E used this incredibly vivid analogy for the current state of partner operations, he compared it to owning a blind horse.

00:09:20: A blind horse.

00:09:21: I love that Right.

00:09:22: The PartnerOps team is anxious.

00:09:24: they can't see what's coming and their just constantly reacting.

00:09:27: whatever obstacle suddenly hits them in face.

00:09:30: They are operating in the dark, relying on manual spreadsheets without clean data or any reliable multi-touch attribution.

00:09:38: So they're being asked to provide a hard ROI number to very skeptical CFO.

00:09:42: but that environment is structurally blind.

00:09:46: It's great analogy!

00:09:47: But I want challenge this premise for just one second.

00:09:48: actually We are quick to blame lack of clean data and we blame external partners not engaging enough.

00:09:55: What if call comes from inside house?

00:09:58: What if our own internal sales reps are the actual bottleneck here?

00:10:01: Oh, that is a fascinating pivot because Peter Vogelsanger highlighted data from a work span field guide.

00:10:09: That looked at six years of co-sell data across thousands of enterprise sellers and the findings were just crystal clear.

00:10:17: The single biggest hurdle in coselling isn't partner activation.

00:10:21: it is internal seller activation.

00:10:23: right.

00:10:24: It is that exact, highly critical moment mid-deal when your internal account executive has to decide whether or not to loop an external partner into active opportunity.

00:10:34: If you're an internal seller does not deeply trust the partners' competence... Or worse, if they fear the partner might complicate the deal cycle and risk their own quarterly quota They'll just keep the deal direct.

00:10:44: So the partnership stalls out internally before The external partner even knows the deal exists

00:10:49: exactly

00:10:49: which means this isn't Just a localized sales culture issue.

00:10:52: It's a symptom of a deeper operational failure.

00:10:55: A brilliant ecosystem strategy means absolutely nothing without rigorous on-the-ground enablement to actually back it up.

00:11:02: Yes Erica Sestak provided a much needed reality check on this dynamic.

00:11:07: We see it on LinkedIn all the time, right?

00:11:09: Two companies signed a strategic partnership.

00:11:11: they swapped logos They push out a joint PR announcement on a Tuesday and the executive teams pop champagne.

00:11:18: Everyone loves a press release!

00:11:20: But without operational follow-through that partnership will generate exactly zero dollars in pipeline A year later...

00:11:29: Operational follow through means creating comp neutral rep incentives.

00:11:32: So your internal seller isn't actively penalized for bringing the partner in, it means building highly specific one page pitch guides that solve a localized customer pain point rather than just handing over some generic forty-page corporate debt and

00:11:45: shared Slack channels.

00:11:47: yeah you need shared slack channels for live mid call support.

00:11:51: if you don't build that operational foundation For One Key Partner going out.

00:11:55: recruiting five more is scaling dysfunction

00:11:57: And the urge to scale too quickly is incredibly dangerous.

00:12:01: Lila Kupal Patel issued a stock warning about this, contrasting enterprise behavior with mid-market reality.

00:12:08: A giant like Microsoft which generates hundreds of billions in revenue they can afford to recruit broadly.

00:12:15: Oh yeah!

00:12:15: They could absorb a thousand inactive deadweight partners without even making a dent their core metrics.

00:12:22: Right But when smaller or mid-market companies try to copy that enterprise recruit broadly playbook, it's a doomed strategy.

00:12:30: A small organization simply does not have the margin for error.

00:12:34: If you only had resources to properly support fifteen key strategic partners and three of them failed to produce pipeline because didn't enable them properly You haven't just lost three logos...you've lost an entire route to market.

00:12:46: Discipline in recruitment becomes your primary competitive advantage.

00:12:50: Dina Moskovitz proposed a strategic framework for this called TAPEM, the Total Addressable Partner Ecosystem Market.

00:12:56: It applies that traditional go-to market discipline of TAM, SAM and SEM directly to partner recruitment...

00:13:01: Meaning you don't just go after everyone?

00:13:03: Right!

00:13:04: Instead of treating every managed service provider in the country as a target… You aggressively narrowed the focus.

00:13:09: She referenced an exercise where An initial pool of thirteen hundred potential partners was methodically filtered down To a highly prioritized list Of just two hundred based on true market alignment and maturity.

00:13:22: You are looking for high leverage relationships, not just sheer volume.

00:13:25: And if you think domestic alignment is difficult look at what happens when these partner models try to expand geographically.

00:13:31: Oh going international?

00:13:32: Yeah

00:13:33: Aliexandra Makretsova posted about the massive friction of taking partnerships International.

00:13:37: she used this great analogy.

00:13:39: It's exactly like trying to open an American fast food franchise overseas without changing The menu to suit local tastes.

00:13:46: You cannot Just take a proven North American partner playbook drop it into the EMEA or APAC markets and expect it to generate revenue.

00:13:54: Standard models break down instantly across borders unless you deeply adapt them, that means adjusting your margin splits.

00:14:11: Right, the cadence is totally different too.

00:14:13: You have to adjust your pipeline reviews.

00:14:26: How do you actually scale that level of hyperlocalization?

00:14:30: how Do You solve the blind horse data gaps?

00:14:32: and how do you bypass The internal seller who absolutely refuses to manually invite a partner To a deal?

00:14:38: well, the answer we are seeing across.

00:14:39: The board is at bdb.

00:14:40: ecosystems Are aggressively injecting ai into the partners stack to essentially force this alignment And This space is evolving incredibly fast.

00:14:48: it Is fundamentally shifting where partners Actually create and capture value.

00:14:54: Ira Simon pointed out that because AI allows software to be deployed and configured so much faster.

00:14:58: now, those traditional profit pools are just drying up.

00:15:02: The big money used to be in these massive multi-year one time implementation projects.

00:15:07: Exactly!

00:15:08: But AI code generation is compressing the timelines down nothing.

00:15:13: So the financial opportunity for partners is moving away from implementation and heavily toward long-term recurring revenue.

00:15:20: Partners are building their models around driving adoption, ensuring data governance and actually measuring business outcomes to client month over month.

00:15:27: And AI's also stepping in solve very specific data activation bottlenecks we were just talking about.

00:15:33: Latif Hamlani built a tool called partner assistant that illustrates this perfectly.

00:15:38: It's an AI agent designed to completely remove the guesswork of knowing which partner reads your internal first-party CRM data.

00:15:51: Then it pulls in second party relationship signals from platforms like Crossbeam, which securely maps where you're customer lists overlap with a partner's list and then finally at layers on third party firmographic data It synthesizes all three streams instantly And literally ranks Which specific partner has the highest probability of accelerating that specific deal?

00:16:12: And it doesn't just give you a recommendation.

00:16:14: It automates the execution, it drafts the co-sell invitation and schedules to kick off...it completely bypasses that internal seller hesitation.

00:16:22: AE doesn't have to wonder if a partner is relevant anymore because the AI has already done the calculus!

00:16:37: They are bringing governed agentic AI directly into highly regulated risk-averse sectors like financial services and legal workflows.

00:16:44: And the key word there is governed, they're achieving this using secure MCP connectors.

00:16:49: Think of an MCP connector as a digital bouncer.

00:16:53: It integrates the AI deep in to the firm's core document platforms but it strictly enforces ethical walls and matter level security permissions.

00:17:02: So the AI can analyze massive data sets, but it physically cannot access or summarize a document that user requesting the prompt doesn't already have clearance to see.

00:17:11: It bridges that crucial gap between raw AI power and strict enterprise compliance.

00:17:16: And Amit Singh noted how Databricks partners are leveraging this exact kind of secure architecture.

00:17:20: via Databrick's lake base, the partners themselves have already built over sixty highly specialized industry specific solutions on top of the platform.

00:17:28: we're talking about partners using AI to reduce massive administrative burdens like bringing claims adjudication down from days till literal minutes.

00:17:37: it's incredible but There's a very practical immediate reality check for all the marketers listening to this right now.

00:17:43: Yeah, I'm an Azure Avenger and called it out brilliantly.

00:17:45: Oh!

00:17:45: The AWS Marketplace Fitcher.

00:17:47: Yes.

00:17:48: AWS Market Place is now utilizing An AI Insights feature.

00:17:52: What This AI does?

00:17:53: Is It Crawls A Software Vendors Pricing Page And Automatically Generates A Plain Language Explanation Of The Total Cost For The Buyer And It Places This Summary Right There On The Lifting Page Reducing Friction Before The Buyor Even Subscribes.

00:18:07: But Here Is The Catch.

00:18:08: The AI can only summarize the data you actually give it.

00:18:11: If your go-to market strategy involves hiding your pricing behind a vague landing page with just single contact sales button, the AI model has absolutely nothing to ingest.

00:18:22: Exactly!

00:18:23: It returns an empty summary and the buyer psychology here is critical.

00:18:27: BW buyers want frictionless evaluation.

00:18:30: If they see your listing with zero pricing clarity, and then look at a competitor whose pricing model was clearly and accurately explained by the AI.

00:18:38: They'll simply click over to the competitor.

00:18:40: if you're strategy is to force a human conversation just to reveal a price The AI ecosystem is going to bypass you entirely.

00:18:47: it forces You To Be Transparent?

00:18:48: If you want to play in the modern marketplace which really leads to A final thought for you Take away from today's deep dive.

00:18:53: yeah And this builds directly on that ai theme.

00:18:56: If AI agents are now reading pricing pages to explain costs, and they're scoring partner overlap using CRM data.

00:19:03: And their automating the actual co-sell invitations... How long is it until your company's AI agent negotiating partner margins in tier access directly with a distributor's AI Agent?

00:19:13: Will ultimate competitive advantage in BWB marketing soon be purely human relationships that trust and nuance an algorithm simply cannot replicate?

00:19:25: Also, check out our other editions on field marketing, MarTech AI and B to be go-to market ABM in social selling.

00:19:31: Thank you so much for joining us For this conversation.

00:19:33: don't forget to hit subscribe And we will catch you on the next deep dive.