Best of LinkedIn: Channel Marketing CW 47/48

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about channel marketing in calendar weeks, forty seven and forty eight.

00:00:08: Frennis is a BDB 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.

00:00:20: Welcome to the deep dive.

00:00:22: You know, if you've been watching the channel marketing space at all lately, you can just feel this shift happening.

00:00:27: It's

00:00:28: palpable.

00:00:28: It really is.

00:00:30: And our insights from the last couple of weeks, they really confirm it.

00:00:33: We're seeing partners move from being, I guess, just an extension of the sales team to being repositioned as true co-owners of the pipeline of adoption and even renewals.

00:00:44: So it's an explicit move then, not just a messaging tweet, but a real operational change to the channel as a core revenue driver.

00:00:51: That's the key.

00:00:52: A strategic function.

00:00:54: Okay, so let's unpack this.

00:00:56: Our mission for this deep dive is to discount the biggest channel marketing trends we've seen on LinkedIn.

00:01:01: We've honed in on the three strongest signals that, frankly, demand executive attention.

00:01:06: First, the incredible scale of marketplace integration.

00:01:10: Second, how AI is being embedded directly into partner GTM.

00:01:14: And third, the non-negotiable need for much tighter revenue mechanics and attribution.

00:01:19: Let's start with that first one, marketplace and platform-led growth.

00:01:22: What's so wild here is just the speed.

00:01:25: The hyperscaler marketplaces think AWS and Microsoft, they've stopped being a side experiment.

00:01:30: Not even close.

00:01:31: No.

00:01:32: They are now, without a doubt, a primary go-to-market lane.

00:01:36: And that has, I mean, profound implications for every source founder out there.

00:01:40: And Pradeep Kumar really emphasized why.

00:01:43: For sauce companies, an AWS marketplace strategy is, in his words, a must-have for growth.

00:01:49: It solves huge headaches right out of the gate.

00:01:51: Like what specifically?

00:01:53: Well, we're talking about instant customer trust.

00:01:54: For one, you get immediate access to thousands of AWS enterprise customers.

00:01:58: And maybe the biggest one is a much faster sales cycle.

00:02:00: Because it just goes on the AWS bill.

00:02:02: Exactly.

00:02:03: The deal gets consolidated onto an existing, often massive, AWS customer bill.

00:02:09: Plus that global scaling advantage, bypassing all that complex billing and tax infrastructure, that's a

00:02:16: huge pull.

00:02:17: That speed and trust.

00:02:18: That's the shiny object that gets everyone excited.

00:02:22: But the sources also brought a pretty big dose of reality.

00:02:26: Which is that a lot of these listings are just... Dead on arrival.

00:02:30: Stalled,

00:02:31: yes.

00:02:32: ISVs are treating the marketplace like an abandoned microsite.

00:02:35: I saw Andrew Morris and Michael Musselman offer a sort of rescue plan and they stressed the internal reframing that has to happen.

00:02:42: What

00:02:43: kind of reframing?

00:02:43: You have to stop seeing it as a broken storefront and start treating it like strategic payment and co-sell infrastructure.

00:02:48: Okay, infrastructure is the key word there.

00:02:50: What does that mean in practice?

00:02:52: It means you have to align the whole internal machine sales, marketing.

00:02:56: ops all around measurable marketplace motions.

00:02:59: Trynnelby made a great point that just listing your product is the starting line.

00:03:03: It's not the finish line.

00:03:04: Success comes when you move from being just reactive to being operationalized.

00:03:08: And that, crucially, requires integrated revenue operations to manage that pipeline flow and make sure the attribution is clean.

00:03:17: So what you list has to align with what your sellers are actually paid on?

00:03:21: You have to.

00:03:22: The marketplace speeds up the deal, but RevOps makes sure the company can actually handle that speed.

00:03:28: Trunel B mentioned a customer who got to what he called the predictive stage.

00:03:32: And what does that look like?

00:03:33: It looks like thirty percent or more of their new revenue flowing directly through the marketplace.

00:03:39: That's when it stops being a nice to have and becomes the lifeblood of your GTM.

00:03:43: Wow.

00:03:44: And this whole platform-led approach got a massive endorsement at Microsoft Ignite, right?

00:03:49: Huge.

00:03:50: Jui Saha and Roman Kersanov were all over this.

00:03:53: They cited Microsoft's leadership framing marketplace as the scale growth engine for the ecosystem.

00:03:58: The metrics.

00:03:59: They're just undeniable.

00:04:01: Omnia data shows deals on marketplace close, seventy-five percent faster.

00:04:04: Seventy-five percent.

00:04:05: And land, sixty-nine percent larger.

00:04:07: That is just... It's a different ball game.

00:04:10: But the real channel multiplier, the thing Roman Kirsanov pointed out was that when an ISV and a channel partner team up on the marketplace, that slice of business grow three and a half times faster.

00:04:22: Three point five

00:04:22: X. Yeah.

00:04:23: Yeah.

00:04:24: That tells you the channel.

00:04:25: is moving its energy and its trust onto the platform's rails.

00:04:28: It does, but that brings up the question of control, right?

00:04:31: How do you empower the partners?

00:04:32: And this is where Darren Sharpe's breakdown of the channel-changing feature resale-enabled offers, or REO, was so interesting.

00:04:41: Now globally available for Microsoft.

00:04:43: Right.

00:04:43: And REO completely changes the game.

00:04:45: It lets the ISV authorize specific partners who then get control over the price, the terms, and the whole customer lifecycle.

00:04:53: all within that secure marketplace environment.

00:04:55: So the hyperscaler platform is basically giving you the guardrails for the traditional channel model, for margin, for influence.

00:05:01: It's recreating that old power structure who controls the customer, who controls the discount.

00:05:06: But at the speed of a digital platform, that's a huge deal for partner trust.

00:05:10: Absolutely.

00:05:11: And it's the perfect transition to our second theme, AI embedded into partner GTM and management.

00:05:17: The conversation is really not about if partners should use AI anymore.

00:05:21: No, it's about how.

00:05:22: It's about how it becomes the core of their commercialization strategy.

00:05:26: That's a point Lance Buchholz and Eric Marnerano were really stressing.

00:05:30: And what

00:05:30: stood out to me is how AI is moving beyond just simple enablement tools.

00:05:35: It's becoming about strategic orchestration.

00:05:38: Siddhartha Ankota emphasized that AI helps partnership leaders move from, you know, gut feel.

00:05:43: Intuition-driven

00:05:44: decisions.

00:05:45: So, intelligence-driven decisions.

00:05:46: He's talking about precision, partner prioritization, knowing exactly who to invest in, and then automating the precision in matching opportunities.

00:05:54: But here's the risk, right?

00:05:55: If you automate all that prioritization in matching, are you losing the human element?

00:06:00: Does AI make you over-index on short-term metrics at the expense of those, you know, long-term relationships built on human trust?

00:06:07: That's the tension, speed versus quality.

00:06:10: And Microsoft seems to be trying to manage that with their frontier firm concept.

00:06:15: Joey Saha and Asher Matthew explained this new frontier partner badge.

00:06:19: And what does it recognize?

00:06:20: It recognizes the organizations that are really leading AI transformation.

00:06:25: And crucially, it requires partners to become Customer zero.

00:06:30: Customer zero.

00:06:31: I love that.

00:06:32: So you have to use it yourself first.

00:06:34: Exactly.

00:06:34: They have to adopt and use AI internally, build real-world AI scenarios before they can credibly sell those outcomes to their own customers.

00:06:43: You have to practice what you preach.

00:06:45: That internal readiness is a great lead-in to a point from Rob Fegan, who gave this really critical reality check.

00:06:51: He said, AI should not be treated like some IT project.

00:06:54: Okay, so how should you treat it?

00:06:55: You have to prioritize reimagining work.

00:06:57: You have to build the guardrails for what stays human and what gets automated before you even touch tools like co-pilots or agents.

00:07:04: That's such an important point.

00:07:05: If you skip that step, you're not automating efficiency.

00:07:08: You're automating chaos.

00:07:10: You are.

00:07:11: And a practical example in a channel setting would be like automating follow-ups with a partner based on an activity score.

00:07:17: But with no human review, you'd end up misaligned or missing really important strategic signals.

00:07:22: Meanwhile, the tooling on the speed side is just advancing like crazy.

00:07:26: Ravi Palladugu mentioned GIL, which is an AWS-trained GTM agent that can immediately act on co-sell signals.

00:07:33: And

00:07:33: convert marketplace interest.

00:07:35: Instantly.

00:07:36: It's a massive compression of the co-sell cycle.

00:07:38: You're basically getting rid of of SDR wait times.

00:07:41: But Gil can only act on the signals it's given, right?

00:07:44: To get to those truly transformative business outcomes, Lance Buchholz argued that generic knowledge is just not going to cut it anymore.

00:07:50: Ordinars have to specialize.

00:07:52: Deeply.

00:07:53: In new high value areas like data strategy and readiness, or prompt engineering and model customization, this is the new premium partner.

00:08:01: They're moving from just go to market to go to value expertise.

00:08:05: OK, let's move to theme three.

00:08:08: Modernizing Partner GTM.

00:08:10: This is really all about the nuts and bolts revenue mechanics and attribution.

00:08:14: Rob Moyer stated pretty plainly that Modern Partner GTM has moved way beyond the classic recruit-enable-retain model.

00:08:21: Yeah, and we have to understand why RER is dead.

00:08:23: I mean, RER was designed to organize a program.

00:08:26: It was a lifecycle tool.

00:08:28: It was not designed to influence a complex deal in motion or to drive clean attribution across a dozen touchpoints.

00:08:35: And that's the reality of B to B sales now.

00:08:37: Modern GTM needs a new vocabulary.

00:08:39: Things like motion fit, deal capability, field integration, and precision and attribution.

00:08:44: These aren't steps in a life cycle.

00:08:46: They are revenue mechanics that directly impact the forecast, no matter where a partner is in their journey with you.

00:08:52: That really speaks to the mindset change Dylan Conner Fernandez was talking about.

00:08:56: He called partnerships an activation sport, not a networking contest.

00:09:00: I like that activation sport.

00:09:02: Yeah.

00:09:03: He stressed that success is about intentional alignment, generating real qualified opportunities.

00:09:09: Not just, you know, admiring the idea of working together or having a great chat.

00:09:14: You've got to operationalize that value pride in five seconds.

00:09:17: And the biggest thing stopping that activation, the thing Kyle E flagged, is the attribution problem.

00:09:22: The black box of partner influence.

00:09:24: Exactly.

00:09:25: If you're still relying on last touch models or just ignoring influence deals, you have these massive executive blind spots.

00:09:32: That model gives zero credit to the partner who accelerated the deal mid funnel or got you through security review or drove crucial post sale adoption.

00:09:40: So strategically, the answer is a multi touch attribution model that can track all of it.

00:09:45: Sourced influenced coastal.

00:09:47: post-sale, the full journey.

00:09:49: But that sounds incredibly hard to actually implement.

00:09:52: It is hard, and that brings us right back to the infrastructure gap.

00:09:55: Pablo Hanono and Elena Zap hit this head-on.

00:09:57: They said modern strategies fail because they're running on outdated tools.

00:10:02: Sometimes literally Excel spreadsheets.

00:10:04: Yes.

00:10:05: Or they just lack the cohesive infrastructure for attribution and visibility.

00:10:09: And if you can't get the data out, you can't prove the value.

00:10:13: So marketing, sales, product, partnerships.

00:10:16: everyone stays in their silos.

00:10:18: So if the infrastructure is manual, the attribution model will always be broken no matter how good it looks on a slide.

00:10:24: Always.

00:10:24: I mean, this whole theme, it just boils down to the need for disciplined, measurable programs.

00:10:30: Craig Booth highlighted that partner leaders need a model that mathematically works.

00:10:35: Otherwise, they're held accountable for results they can't control.

00:10:38: Which is where his structured performance partnering comes in.

00:10:40: Exactly.

00:10:41: To solve that partner math equation and finally shed some light on that dark

00:10:45: funnel.

00:10:46: Okay, let's shift to our final theme.

00:10:48: Partner marketing, operating model and discipline.

00:10:50: This section really drove home that it's consistent execution, not some flash of brilliance that leads to growth.

00:10:56: Yes.

00:10:57: David McCullough's core rule for channel marketing was just so clear.

00:11:00: Consistency beats creativity every time.

00:11:03: Every single time.

00:11:04: He pointed out that regular, repeatable content drops with pre-planned follow-ups.

00:11:10: Those were the top performing campaigns.

00:11:12: They had two point one times higher conversion rates.

00:11:14: And Becky Thompson built on that, saying that consistency in your messaging is what builds that crucial channel trust and clarity.

00:11:22: Partners need to know what to expect and how to execute it easily.

00:11:25: And Christina Kerstensen took that idea and just operationalized it perfectly.

00:11:30: She proposed getting rid of the chaotic ad hoc campaign bursts.

00:11:34: Replacing them with what?

00:11:36: With co-branded customer facing content hubs.

00:11:39: These hubs become an always-on-demand gen engine.

00:11:42: It's way easier for partners to grab good content, and it lets vendors sell guaranteed volumes without constantly reinventing the wheel.

00:11:49: That structural change makes so much sense, especially when you see the data on the investment imbalance.

00:11:54: Oh, this was staggering.

00:11:56: Laura Bresslaw cited data from the Insight Partners Pipeline Generation Survey.

00:12:00: It showed strategic partners delivered twenty-six percent of win rates.

00:12:04: The

00:12:04: highest of any GTM motion they observed.

00:12:06: The highest.

00:12:07: But here's the kicker.

00:12:09: The strategic mistake.

00:12:10: Partner marketing only gets fourteen percent of marketing dollars.

00:12:14: Wait, say that again.

00:12:15: Partners deliver the highest win rate, more than a quarter of all wins, but they get barely a tenth of the marketing budget.

00:12:22: It's

00:12:22: a profound disconnect.

00:12:23: So why is that gap so persistent?

00:12:25: Especially when GTM leaders are so worried about customer acquisition costs.

00:12:29: I think it goes right back to our last theme.

00:12:31: It's the inability to attribute the full value of that part of influence.

00:12:35: Until the math can prove that twenty-six percent win rate is worth twenty-six percent of the budget, the funding will always lag.

00:12:41: Which is why the community is pushing for smarter models, like near-bound.

00:12:46: Tell us about near-bound.

00:12:48: Well, Lucy Hackman advocated for moving past that old inbound versus outbound fight and focusing on near-bound selling.

00:12:54: The strategy is to leverage the ecosystems your customers already trust.

00:12:58: So using partner power deal accelerators and co-sell content engines.

00:13:02: Exactly, to shorten sales cycles and basically triple your credibility overnight.

00:13:06: The idea is, if my trusted partner validates your solution, that deal moves thirty to forty percent faster than if you just cold called

00:13:13: me.

00:13:13: That makes perfect sense.

00:13:14: You're leveraging existing trust to get past all the modern customer skepticism.

00:13:18: Absolutely.

00:13:19: And Laura Breslau tied it all together nicely.

00:13:21: She emphasized that successful co-marketing needs clear, joint value props, prioritize segments, and dedicated funding for real plays like multi-city roadshows.

00:13:31: The environment just has to reflect to the proven highest win rate in the entire organization.

00:13:37: So to synthesize this whole deep dive, I think channel success heading into twenty twenty six is really defined by disciplined programs.

00:13:44: Programs that can leverage the reach and velocity of these platform marketplaces and that use AI driven intelligence based insights.

00:13:51: It demands a huge shift.

00:13:53: It does a fundamental shift from just managing partner relationships to managing sophisticated measurable revenue mechanics and really operationalizing trust.

00:14:01: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:14:05: Also check out our other editions on account-based marketing, field marketing, AI and BB marketing, MarTech, go-to-market and social selling.

00:14:13: And here's a final provocative thought for you to chew on.

00:14:16: Given this huge focus on AI driving specialized co-innovation, something leaders like Lance Buchholz emphasized, how should organizations change their traditional partner comp models?

00:14:27: How do you reward this high-value service.

00:14:29: attach the specialization in prompt engineering instead of just rewarding simple volume or a traditional co-sell?

00:14:35: That is definitely something to consider as you draft your twenty twenty six plans and redefine what value really means in your partner ecosystem.

00:14:43: Thank you for joining us for the deep dive.

00:14:45: We'll see you next time.