Best of LinkedIn: Channel Marketing & Partner Ecosystem CW 43/ 44

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

00:00:07: In calendar weeks.

00:00:08: forty three and forty four.

00:00:10: Frens is a B to be market research company that supports enterprise marketing teams and unlocking full potential of their customer data with help from AI.

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

00:00:21: so imagine realizing Ninety-five percent of the generative AI pilots your enterprise just spent The last year building resulted in well absolutely zero dollars added to Your bottom line.

00:00:33: Yeah, Zero.

00:00:34: it's a really staggering failure rate.

00:00:37: and you know today our mission is To tear down exactly why that Is happening.

00:00:42: because It's Happening A lot.

00:00:43: Oh, absolutely.

00:00:44: So if you are a strategic DDB marketing professional listening to this consider your fluff-free high signal shortcut.

00:00:51: we're cutting through all the noise to examine structural shifts that actually driving revenue in channel marketing right now.

00:00:58: Right because whether building a partner program entirely from scratch or maybe trying and navigate them massive honestly sometimes incredibly opaque world of hyperscaler ecosystems You just don't have time for vanity metrics.

00:01:11: No

00:01:12: We're looking at a complete architectural shift in go-to market strategies.

00:01:17: And it really begins with how cloud marketplaces are fundamentally changing, like they're moving from simple procurement tools into the primary arteries of enterprise revenue.

00:01:27: Yeah and that's shift I mean just cannot be overstated.

00:01:31: for a long time A Cloud Marketplace was basically just a digital catalog

00:01:34: Right Like you went there to buy software?

00:01:37: Exactly.

00:01:37: But now It essentially dictates The entire flow Of Enterprise Capital.

00:01:42: You can actually see the magnitude of this ship by looking at what Roman Kirsanov recently highlighted regarding Oracle.

00:01:48: Oh, The massive billion-dollar thing?

00:01:51: Yes!

00:01:51: Oracle is making a one billion dollar commitment to their partner ecosystem over the next four years.

00:01:56: I mean a billion dollars is a massive bet especially for our company that historically you know relied so heavily on traditional direct enterprise sales.

00:02:04: It

00:02:05: really is.

00:02:05: they are pivoting hard because they are looking at the hyperscaler playbook, The one perfected by AWS and Microsoft.

00:02:12: And there basically copying it line-by-line

00:02:14: taking exact formula right?

00:02:16: They're opening up their marketplace to aggressive co cell motions.

00:02:21: And the mechanics of why they are doing this or just crucial for marketers to understand enterprises are signing these massive multi year cloud spend commitments.

00:02:30: Yeah Oracle realizes that To capture those enterprise budgets, they have to ensure that a significant portion of those committed dollars can be spent on third-party partner software right inside the Oracle Marketplace.

00:02:41: Okay let's unpack the mechanics of that bit because this is where The Daily Reality for our Partner Manager just completely changes.

00:02:48: Jessica Zimmick pointed out something fascinating about how it impacts term lengths.

00:02:53: Oh!

00:02:53: This was such good point.

00:02:55: She noted that bringing cloud reps into deals early can structurally transform a standard one-year SaaS contract Into a three year commitment,

00:03:05: which is obviously the ultimate goal for any vendor.

00:03:07: But the mechanism behind it.

00:03:08: Is what makes its so powerful.

00:03:10: It fundamentally bypasses traditional procurement friction

00:03:13: right?

00:03:13: Its entirely about budget mechanics.

00:03:16: It's kind of like it's like finding up forgotten gift card in your wallet Right at the checkout counter.

00:03:20: you know write when procurement is trying to block your software purchase.

00:03:24: That's a perfect way to look at it.

00:03:25: Suddenly, the buyer realizes they can purchase your solution by drawing down against a spend commitment that you have already made with Cloud Provider.

00:03:34: Exactly!

00:03:35: So we don't have budget for this—objection just completely evaporates and instead becomes... We actually need burn-down our existing cloud commit before year ends.

00:03:46: so let us sign on three-year deal.

00:03:49: And if you understand those mechanics, You start to see how it completely reorients the incentives for the sales reps on the floor.

00:03:56: This is playing out really vividly right now in the Salesforce ecosystem.

00:04:00: Oh yeah!

00:04:00: The agent exchange stuff?

00:04:02: Right Heather Mason recently analyzed Avalara's hyperscaler co-sell lessons and she focused specifically On the new Salesforce Agent Exchange Transactible Marketplace

00:04:14: which just a massive paradigm shift for independent software vendors or ISVs building on that platform.

00:04:20: It really is, because once your solution is transactable on their marketplace the Salesforce account executive effectively becomes you're most highly motivated partner.

00:04:29: Wow yeah

00:04:30: think about it.

00:04:31: if you are an ISV with a high-cost solution that helps the end customer burn down they're committed sales force spend.

00:04:38: That Salesforce AE is going to aggressively push your solution into their accounts

00:04:42: Because it helps them retire their own quota.

00:04:44: Right.

00:04:44: Exactly, you are aligning your product directly with their compensation plan.

00:04:49: it's brilliant.

00:04:50: Hold on though I have to challenge this premise just a little bit.

00:04:52: Okay go for it.

00:04:53: If these massive platform AEs whether they're at Salesforce AWS or Azure if there is pushing whatever third party software burns down the customers cloud commit aren't they optimizing entirely for budget consumption rather than actually solving the customer's specific technical problem?

00:05:11: That is a very fair point.

00:05:12: Like, doesn't

00:05:13: that risk pushing bad fits just to hit

00:05:15: quotas?"?

00:05:16: That is the exact structural risk of this model and it's a brilliant question to ask.

00:05:21: The hyperscaler AE is optimizing for cloud-consumption full stop.

00:05:26: They are not necessarily deep product experts on your specific marketing automation tool or you know Your cybersecurity platform

00:05:32: Right.

00:05:33: This is precisely why smaller vendors cannot just rely on the platform AE to do the selling.

00:05:38: The AE holds the budget key, but they don't hold the trusted advisor status for this specific technical

00:05:44: implementation.".

00:05:46: So if you're a small partner and have no massive brand recognition yet….

00:05:50: how can we bridge that gap?

00:05:52: You can't shout into the void hoping AWS Rep notices you!

00:05:58: And Amanda Nielsen mapped out an effective strategy.

00:06:02: She argues that smaller partners need to stop chasing the platform directly.

00:06:07: Stop going straight to AWS,

00:06:09: right?

00:06:09: Instead you have to execute what she calls The High School Strategy.

00:06:13: You Need To Befriend The Systems Integrators Who Are Mapping The Tech Architecture The Other ISVs Building Complimentary Software And The VARS The Value Added Resellers who are actually implementing it.

00:06:23: I really like That Framing The high school strategy.

00:06:26: It's Essentially Ecosystem Orchestration.

00:06:28: Yes Because if you want the platform AE to notice, You build relationships with people who already own the customer's technical trust.

00:06:36: Like when three different systems integrators are telling the platform a hey!

00:06:40: To make this cloud migration work we need bring in THIS specific smaller partner.

00:06:44: You suddenly become impossible to ignore.

00:06:47: Exactly He let the ecosystem do intro for ya.

00:06:49: That

00:06:50: is so smart.

00:06:52: The marketplaces dictate where the money is flowing.

00:06:54: But navigating those complex webs of relationships, you know coordinating the SI, the ISV and the customer it creates an immense amount of operational drag.

00:07:04: human relationship managers simply cannot process that much collaborative data efficiently

00:07:08: which naturally forces a transition into our next major shift.

00:07:11: because if market places dictate the capital artificial intelligence is completely rewriting the daily mechanics.

00:07:20: And just a quick note for you listening, if you are finding this breakdown of go-to market mechanics valuable make sure to subscribe so that we catch our future deep dives.

00:07:28: But yeah...this transition AI is huge!

00:07:37: A suitcase word.

00:07:44: Meaning like everyone is packing their own wildly different definitions into it before they carry it in a meeting?

00:07:50: Exactly that!

00:07:52: One revenue operations team uses to mean fully autonomous agents negotiating deals end-to-end and then another use the exact same phrase, To means simple script that summarizes Zoom Meeting transcripts.

00:08:04: That's a massive gap of expectations

00:08:07: Huge.

00:08:08: If strategic marketing teams don't establish a shared definition of what AI is actually supposed to execute in their partner program, they cannot possibly measure its return on investment.

00:08:18: Which brings us right back that staggering statistic.

00:08:21: we opened the deep dive with Paul Magnone provided serious reality check on this exact measurement problem he highlighted at ninety five percent.

00:08:30: enterprise generative AI pilots showed absolutely no PNL impact no actual revenue generated.

00:08:36: No real costs saved

00:08:38: and the reason why is profound.

00:08:40: He pointed out that during cloud era partners were primarily selling migration.

00:08:46: Just moving workloads,

00:08:47: right?

00:08:47: Moving existing workloads from on-premise servers up to the Cloud.

00:08:51: but in the AI era Partners have to sell changed work.

00:08:55: You cannot just migrate a process.

00:08:57: you have to fundamentally alter how the human actually does their job.

00:09:01: Oh I see it's like upgrading your massive logistics warehouse with a state of the art multi-million dollar robotic sorting system, but you still require every single delivery driver to fill out a paper ledger by hand at the front desk before they can load their truck.

00:09:16: That is such a good analogy

00:09:17: right like The AI in the back as doing work instantly.

00:09:21: But the workflow bottlenecks that human level completely kill return on investment.

00:09:26: the tech works perfectly.

00:09:31: That is the perfect operational way to think about it.

00:09:34: If you layer an advanced AI agent on top of a broken siloed partner process, You just get a faster broken process?

00:09:42: Yeah

00:09:42: Just making mistakes quicker

00:09:44: Exactly.

00:09:45: And this disconnect between technical capability and business execution Is hitting a massive wall when it comes to data access.

00:09:53: Grady Wyman broke down The actual technical bottleneck happening right now Which is the rise of MCP servers?

00:10:00: Okay, let's explain MCP because this is where the marketing strategy really hits.

00:10:05: The IT reality right?

00:10:07: MCP stands for model context protocol.

00:10:10: an AI agent Is completely useless if it cannot actually reach your company's proprietary data.

00:10:15: obviously

00:10:16: You can buy the smartest co-sell agent on the market But if you cannot securely read your CRM or your ER P system It is effectively just a generic chatbot.

00:10:26: those systems of record like Salesforce HubSpot, SAP.

00:10:31: They have become the ultimate gig keepers.

00:10:33: Well yeah because you can't just give a large language model unrestricted access to your entire CRM I mean it would read everyone's pipeline expose confidential deal sizes and probably violate every security protocol.

00:10:45: You have

00:10:46: exactly And that is exactly what MCP solves.

00:10:50: partners are now demanding governed access via mcp servers.

00:10:55: It creates this standardized secure bridge.

00:10:59: So the AI agent asks the MCP server for context on a deal, and they MCP Server only returns data that specific user is legally or structurally allowed to see.

00:11:08: You nailed it!

00:11:10: If you are channel marketer right now... ...you need understand your AI strategy entirely dependent of this governed data architecture.

00:11:17: That makes so much sense.

00:11:19: And y'know It isn't just about internal execution and data access The way partners are discovering each other out in the wild Is changing because of this architecture too?

00:11:28: Oh, absolutely.

00:11:29: Suius pointed out that Microsoft Copilot is rapidly becoming the fastest growing partner discovery channel

00:11:35: which introduces a massive new mandate for B to be marketers answer engine optimization or AEO.

00:11:42: we have to spend a minute on AEO because if you are a marketer You've spent the last decade entirely obsessed with SEO getting your partner landing pages to rank on Google.

00:11:52: but AEO as completely different mechanism

00:11:55: totally different

00:11:56: Field sellers are no longer going to a web browser.

00:11:58: To search for a partner.

00:11:59: They're opening up prompt window inside Microsoft co-pilot and typing which of our managed service providers has the best integration For supply chain analytics in the European market, right?

00:12:09: And if your marketing collateral is not structured specifically for A large language model to read and parse You will Not be recommended.

00:12:18: you

00:12:18: just won't show Up

00:12:19: exactly to The seller.

00:12:20: you effectively do not exist.

00:12:23: So, what does that actually mean for the marketer?

00:12:24: who's building a battle card or one pager?

00:12:28: It means you have to stop relying on heavy visual design and flowery marketing copy.

00:12:34: LLMs want structured data.

00:12:36: They want semantic HTML, clear markdown tables and explicitly defined integration capabilities If your unique value proposition is buried inside a visually stunning but unreadable PDF graphic.

00:12:49: the AI agent cannot extract it to answer the seller's prompt.

00:12:52: It forces this huge shift from designing for human visual appeal To structuring for machine comprehension.

00:13:00: And we are seeing this machine first approach completely redesigned the partner portal experience as well.

00:13:06: Latif Hamlani recently highlighted how AWS Partner Central is evolving.

00:13:10: Oh, This Is Fascinating

00:13:11: right?

00:13:11: The Portal itself is ceasing to be a static directory and it's literally becoming an active agent

00:13:17: Which honestly might Be the biggest quality of life improvement for partner managers We've seen in A decade.

00:13:23: oh without a doubt.

00:13:24: yeah.

00:13:24: It is structurally eliminating the dreaded multi-step deal intake form.

00:13:29: AWS is now allowing partners to create co-sell opportunities simply by uploading the transcript of a meeting or by having a natural language chat with a portal.

00:13:38: Just think about the amount of pipeline leakage that happens purely because a sales rep does not want to manually log into a portal, navigate three different menus and fill out twenty required fields just to register a deal.

00:13:49: It's a massive amount.

00:13:52: By turning the portal into an agent, The input becomes... ...the natural work that the rep is already doing.

00:13:58: Having a conversation!

00:13:59: The AI parses the transcript, identifies the account, flags the relevant products and just registers the deal.

00:14:06: It removes the operational friction That traditionally kills partner.

00:14:10: momentum

00:14:10: It does?

00:14:11: It's incredible.

00:14:12: But we have to pivot here slightly because there IS A dangerous trap in all this automation.

00:14:17: Okay what's the trap?

00:14:18: AI can remove the friction from your operations but it absolutely cannot fix a fundamentally flawed partnership strategy.

00:14:25: If your foundation is cracked, pouring AI over it won't save the

00:14:29: house.".

00:14:30: Which brings us right into the actual design of partner programs and operating models beneath them.

00:14:35: because the reality building that foundation is often completely misunderstood especially by leadership teams?

00:14:42: Marsha Dempster provided a much needed reality check on this, specifically targeting startups and scale-ups.

00:14:47: There is this pervasive method you can just hire ahead of partnerships give them no budget isolate from the rest revenue team and expect to suddenly generate massive pipeline in two quarters.

00:14:59: The lone wolf partner manager approach never works.

00:15:02: It structurally cannot work!

00:15:05: Dempester points out that building successful channel organization across functional teamsport It requires deep executive alignment, dedicated marketing resources and rigorous revenue operation support.

00:15:17: And it takes time right?

00:15:19: So much time!

00:15:20: Crucially she notes that it takes about three full years to yield predictable scalable revenue.

00:15:25: Three years

00:15:26: Yeah.

00:15:27: Year one is purely foundational alignment.

00:15:30: year two is activation in testing... ...and year three when you actually see scale.

00:15:35: Building the foundation correctly means abandoning old lazy habits of industry.

00:15:40: Craig Booth made a compelling argument that we have to completely stop accepting ad hoc opportunistic partnering.

00:15:46: You know the model, sign up partner do a quick press release and just hope they stumble into it.

00:15:51: deal for you.

00:15:52: Hope is not go-to market strategy.

00:15:53: Exactly

00:15:55: Booth advocates for transition to structured performance partnering.

00:15:59: This means your indirect channel plans must be as heavily engineered resourced and rigorously measured As direct enterprise sales plan.

00:16:07: It requires prescriptive account mapping, defined joint sales plays and actual execution intelligence.

00:16:14: But if we are being honest to achieve that level of structured alignment We have to solve the oldest most toxic turf war in The B-to-B organization.

00:16:22: Oh I know exactly where you're going

00:16:24: with this.

00:16:24: Craig Patterson hit his head on.

00:16:27: Marketing teams and channeled teams have to stop fighting over attribution.

00:16:30: Yes...the

00:16:31: endless battle for who gets to claim the sourced revenue.

00:16:35: Patterson points out how destructive this is, especially now because eighty-three percent of the B to V buying journey happens in The Dark.

00:16:42: Right buyers are conducting their own research increasingly using AI long before they ever raise their hand and talk to a vendor.

00:16:49: Exactly And Because Of That Dark Funnel Partners Are Off In The Actual Demand Engine.

00:16:54: They're Out In The Market Catching Buyers Who've Already Made Up Their Minds.

00:16:57: But Here Is My Challenge To That.

00:17:00: If Both Marketing & The Partner Touch The Deal How do you practically split the dashboard without double counting revenue and throwing off the CFO's projections?

00:17:08: Well, we have to move away from first touch or last-touch sourcing obsession.

00:17:11: And moved toward unified pipeline metrics.

00:17:15: You track partner influence revenue alongside marketing influenced revenue.

00:17:19: And leadership just has to accept that these numbers will overlap.

00:17:23: Right, because fighting over attribution in a partner ecosystem is basically like two farmers fighting over who gets credit for the rain when they both planted the seeds.

00:17:32: I love that analogy!

00:17:33: The customer doesn't care who get's credit They just want to crop...they want solution that works

00:17:37: Exactly.

00:17:38: Marketing provides broad air cover and digital footprint while the Partner provides localized trust technical validation timing You share the scoreboard

00:17:48: Exactly And part of maturing that strategy means focusing your resources tightly.

00:17:53: Ellis Martinez shared a philosophy that goes against a lot traditional channel metrics, vendors need to stop building massive useless partner directories.

00:18:02: Oh

00:18:03: the classic vanity logo wall?

00:18:05: It is entirely counterproductive.

00:18:07: having five hundred registered partners means absolutely nothing if only a dozen them are actually active and transacting

00:18:14: right.

00:18:15: Winning in today's ecosystem requires fewer, but significantly deeper partnerships.

00:18:21: You have to build your strategy around a partner's quote crown jewels their deepest domain expertise and they're strongest existing market practices.

00:18:28: Yes

00:18:29: you match our product to what?

00:18:30: They already do best.

00:18:32: rather than arrogantly asking them To learn an entirely new sales motion just for your software right

00:18:37: it requires genuine strategic alignment.

00:18:41: now we are coming to the end of our analysis But We really need to finish with a critical, somewhat controversial perspective on how these ecosystems actually operate at the highest levels of enterprise tech.

00:18:53: Yeah

00:18:53: we have to talk about this.

00:18:55: David Limpicum pulled back The Curtain on something every strategic marketer needs to understand.

00:19:00: This is the spicy take on structural conflict of interest.

00:19:05: It's very spicy.

00:19:07: He pointed out the dirty secret of Enterprise technology selection.

00:19:11: When massive global systems integrators or high-end consultancies advise Fortune Five Hundred clients on which cloud architecture, or AI platform to choose they are very rarely providing neutral objective advice.

00:19:25: Because they have deep structural financial conflicts built into their business models?

00:19:29: Exactly!

00:19:31: These massive consultancies receive immense alliance fees, co-sell commissions and reseller margins from the platforms that recommend.

00:19:40: If an SI stands to make a massive multi-million dollar payout for recommending Cloud Platform A and absolutely nothing for recommending platform B, well their independent architectural advice is fundamentally compromised by those economics.

00:19:55: It all comes down following the incentives.

00:19:58: For a partner marketer, understanding those hidden economic currents is just vital.

00:20:03: You aren't just marketing the technical superiority of your tool.

00:20:06: you are navigating a complex web of financial incentives where the best tech doesn't always win if the integration partner isn't being compensated to push it.

00:20:15: It's harsh reality of a market.

00:20:17: Economics drive ecosystem behavior far more than future sets do.

00:20:21: Yeah they really do.

00:20:24: This has been an incredibly dense mechanism focused deep dive into how these systems are actually functioning today.

00:20:31: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:20:34: also check out our other editions on field marketing, martech AI in B to be go-to market ABM and social selling.

00:20:43: And before we close I want to leave you with one final thought to mull over kind of synthesizing what We discussed about answer engine optimization and those agentic partner portals.

00:20:54: We know that co-pilot is actively reading structured content, right?

00:20:58: And we know the portals are beginning to act as autonomous intake agents.

00:21:01: Right

00:21:03: So fast forward.

00:21:04: just a few development cycles.

00:21:06: How long until your company's AI partner agent starts directly negotiating cosel margins deal registration terms and private marketplace offers with a hyperscaler's AI agent?

00:21:17: What happens to your go-to market strategy when the machines are completely bypassing human relationship managers?

00:21:22: To structure the financial terms of a deal

00:21:25: man, that is a wild operational reality to prepare for.

00:21:28: like Are we optimizing our partner programs for Human Relationship building or are we structurally optimizing them from machine to machine negotiation?

00:21:36: Definitely something to seriously consider as you review.

00:21:40: You're strategic planning this week.

00:21:42: Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive.

00:21:44: Don't forget to subscribe and we will see you next time We Unpack The Ecosystem.