John (00:01)
Well, good morning, Bryan, and welcome to the Partnership Path in Real Life. I’m super excited that you agreed to come on the show with us. But before we get going, I want to give you a chance to introduce yourself to our audience. So tell us a little bit about who you are and how long you’ve been working with partners.

Bryan (00:21)
Horace John, yeah, it’s great to see you again. So I’ve been working with partners for quite a long time. If I look at it in the core function, I mean, I’m currently the vice president of cloud and technology partnerships for a cloud security company named Sysdig. I’ve been in roles like that, working directly with ISVs and cloud partners for about 13 years. And before that, I spent 10 years in roles in product management and product portfolio management.

you know roles that have some of the very same characteristics that we’re talking about today in terms of engaging with internal stakeholders. So if you add it all together close to 25 years.

John (00:58)
Dude, you’re not that old. It’s not possible.

Bryan (01:00)
I know, I know, just,

you know, I know, John, I look good and I’m not ashamed of it.

John (01:07)
I should we should share with our listeners that that you and I have known each other for a really long time For probably all of that 25 years, although we haven’t always worked together, but we have had a stint in the in our past So that’s awesome. Well, listen, We had you on here because Tony and I just did this episode on managing internal stakeholders And I know that that was something you and I have talked about in the past. So

Bryan (01:19)
Indeed, indeed.

John (01:34)
Let’s just start with what of the stuff that Tony and I talked about, what resonated for you or what stood out for you or what kind of triggered you and what do you have to say about it? Bring it on, Bryan.

Bryan (01:47)
Well, so one thing specifically, you know, John, is that I think that you drew the connection between internal stakeholder engagement and, you know, an external stakeholder engagement. I mean, the reality is the projects that we lead as partner teams are sales cycles, right? I they really are. And we are

John (02:07)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan (02:09)
engaging with internal stakeholders and we need to understand how they think and how they’re motivated and what outcomes they’re trying to create in order to shape what we’re doing to a way that matches the business. And so I think that’s a really good way to think about it and that jumped out at me.

John (02:26)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I don’t think a lot of times people think about that, right? They don’t think about the fact that we should be as careful and as strategic with our internal stakeholders as we are with our customers or partners when we think about it. Yeah. Well, tell me more. What else? I know when you and I talked a little bit about having you on this episode, there were some things that you were talking about in terms of

Bryan (02:42)
Absolutely.

John (02:54)
you know, business cases and some of that about how to convince stakeholders to even want to participate. Tell me a little bit about it.

Bryan (02:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I’ll give you an example and I’ll give you an example through, you know, sort of, you know, failure really, right? I mean, so this is reasonably recent where, you know, I wanted to bring in some technology to white label into our current product portfolio, you know? And so I did my work, I put together, you know, the pitch and John, was a beautiful pitch. You know, the CEO, the CEO was on board, the head of product, the head of engineering, these guys were on

John (03:27)
Ha ha!

Bryan (03:33)
And I was working with finance on how we were going to do the accounting, everybody and I talked to the CRO. I knew that the CRO was a little bit less enthused, you know, but I thought I would get past it. And the simple answer is, is I didn’t, right? I mean, what happened there is, you know, the CRO was really going in a slightly different direction where he was trying to narrow the focus of his sellers, not expand it, right? I what are the use cases we’re solving?

John (03:49)
Hmm.

Bryan (04:03)
who are the target customers, let’s get repeatable and figure out how to really get more productivity out of the sales organization. And my initiative was considered to be a complicating factor. And at the end of the day, he owns the number and he owns how he’s gonna get to the number. And it was just a case where again, I got most of the, there was someone with a veto who I didn’t get to adequately, right?

John (04:22)
Yeah.

Right.

Bryan (04:32)
And I look internally when those things happen, right? That’s my fault, right? That’s my fault for not engaging properly and getting that done. I lost that deal. You know, it’s not his fault. He’s doing his job and he’s got his motivations and he’s got a big number on his head. So I don’t hold him in ill regard for that. That’s just how things go.

John (04:35)
Yep. Yep.

Well, look, I think, I mean, I love that. Number one, thank you for being so transparent, right? And about something that you didn’t do right necessarily. I love that, right? This is what our community is looking for is a little bit of validation that, know, hey, sometimes it doesn’t work, right? Sometimes you gotta learn from your mistakes and try it again. And for me, that story you just told is really…

hammers home a bigger point beyond this internal stakeholder thing about really understanding how the partnership, whatever format that’s taking, in your case this white label idea, how that actually helps get your company or the partner company what it is they’re trying to get to. And in this case, it was a viable opportunity. It just wasn’t the way

that stakeholder really wanted it to work because they had a different plan in place.

Bryan (05:51)
I think sometimes it’s really timing like anything else, right? And you need to match your timing. But as you said, it just sort of hammered home for me. I you live, learn, and you need to be really thoughtful about these different things.

John (05:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what else? Any other thoughts that came to mind as I asked you to come on this episode and talk about internal stakeholders? Any horror stories you got for us or anything like that?

Bryan (06:20)
Well, I think a big thing for me when we think about the partner function, and this is very related to internal stakeholders as well. It’s very common to me, and I know that you work a lot on the channel side. I don’t think there’s a lot of difference in some of the macro elements to the channel side versus the ISV side versus the cloud side. But one thing that I think is really important in a partner team is to be

experts in the business, right? We need to understand our product and our differentiation and how we go to market and why we win. I see partner teams that I’ve joined in the past, like I’ll give you a classic example. They’ll go, you know what? We need some things in order to drive the business forward, but product won’t build what we want. I’m like, okay, that’s probably true. They won’t build what you want, but that’s…

John (07:08)
Right.

Bryan (07:14)
More than likely because you haven’t built the relationship of being a value added partner to that product organization. They might see you as just another stakeholder that has requirements that they need to put on a big spreadsheet and the like. And I think it’s really important that you be, you know, credible, you understand your business and you become a partner of that organization and you bring value to them. So when you schedule a meeting, they’re interested to hear what you have to say.

John (07:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan (07:43)
but how you can help them be more effective. And if you create that bi-directional relationship with these different stakeholders internally, you’ll find you can get things done. If you are just a thorn in their side for something that you care about and they don’t, you just won’t get it.

John (07:57)
Yeah, yeah, we talked, know Tony and I talked in the main episode about this idea of collaboration, right? Of really being understanding what it is that that stakeholder really wants and then bringing them into that conversation of collaboration as opposed to, hey, here’s how it is, deal with it, right? It’s gotta be much more collaborative than that.

Bryan (08:21)
Well, and often we’re working in areas that are a little bit on the partner side that can be less cut and dried, less clear. It’s not do this, win this deal necessarily, right? It’s not always, you know, that crystal clear. And so I believe having that trusted relationship and one that is bi-directional where you’re helping them, when they look at the partner team, they go, you guys helped me with sales reach or you guys helped me.

John (08:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan (08:50)
fill in these gaps of these products that I don’t have time to build so we look more complete in the market, right? And if they have that view that you helped me do X or you helped the company do X, that’s when you’re gonna get collaboration coming the other way.

John (09:05)
Yeah. So what are some of the things that you do to make that more effective, Bryan? Like what are some of the tricks of the trades? What are some of the things you’ve learned over the last 13 years in particular in this sort of ISV motion of how to get those stakeholders to see the vision and see how it maps to what they want to get done?

Bryan (09:28)
Well, expanding on what I said, think know the business is really important, right? I encourage people on my team to, you know, I work in a technical field and our buyers are technical people and people that show up and say, hey, I don’t really know a lot about the technology. I’m like, okay, well, that’s a bad start, right? Because you work in technology, right? But you need to know your business. I think a…

John (09:32)
Yep, yep.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

Bryan (09:54)
Another thing that we talked about just briefly before is how do you bring value to these other teams? Right? There’s a value exchange here. Like there isn’t any relationship, whether it’s a marriage or whether it’s a, you know, which again, you talked about when you’re your previous conversation with Sony, right? And so you need to bring value to that team and you need to identify how to do that. I think another major thing is you have to cross the line. It’s what I mean by that is, and I don’t mean cross the line in a bad way. I’ve done that too. but,

John (10:04)
Right.

Bryan (10:23)
but I mean crossing the line from a standpoint of when you look at organizational divides, there are often these gaps between them where it’s nobody’s job. And so I make it my job to do the things that are nobody’s job, right? Because if you wait for someone else to do them, you’re gonna keep on waiting. And if you fill in that gap, right, you’re going to again get to that point of collaboration. And so I almost welcome those places where technically nobody

John (10:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Bryan (10:51)
owns that and is going to step up and do that and how do it and if it’s relevant to you, how do you fill that void? Right? I think that’s a, you know, a pretty, I think it’s an interesting opportunity to sort of think about it that way in terms of how do you fill in those gaps? Those are just a couple ideas,

John (10:57)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. think, you know, I talk at times about how organizations create vacuums, which is, think, what you’re describing, right? Which is this concept where things are in between swim lanes almost in an organization, so it’s not getting done. And it does create a vacuum. And the reality is, I think, to what you’re talking about in terms of crossing the line is somebody eventually is going to cross the line. The question is, is it going to be you?

Or is there going to be somebody else in the org that then gets what you were hoping for? And so you might as well be the one to do that.

Bryan (11:42)
Right.

Absolutely. Absolutely. it’s it’s sometimes it’s hard work, right? And sometimes it’s uncomfortable, right? And but that’s what I think we we need to lean into is sometimes lean into that uncomfortable. Because again, that’s when you’re going to surprise yourself with some of the outcomes you may be able to get. Right. And so I think that’s, you know, really key. And another thing that I sort of

John (11:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan (12:10)
you hire for because I think that it supports all the things we’ve just talked about is just, want curiosity to just be just a fundamental, innate characteristic of the people that, you know, I bring into my team, right? I mean, you have to want to learn what motivates other people. You have to want to learn what your company does. And so, you know, you have to ask questions and maybe challenge, you know, assumptions and the like. And I just think that that curiosity is just really important.

John (12:17)
Yeah.

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Super fascinating perspective. I wish there was a class that we could have taken in college, And it should have just been labeled curiosity, right? You take all these business classes or technical classes or whatever, and what it never teaches you, at least in the education system I came through, was how to take all that and then actually think about it.

Bryan (13:04)
Mm-hmm.

John (13:09)
and be curious about why, and then go back and analyze it again, right? I it took me years of work experience before I really got curious about how things work, both internally, my customers, my partners, like that is, curiosity is a huge part of being successful in any of these jobs. And I mean, if we bring it back to this topic, it’s the same thing with these internal stakeholders, being curious about

what it is that they do, why they care, what they’re motivated by. It answers all kinds of questions.

Bryan (13:45)
Yeah, I completely agree. I think when we initially, I I did this when I was earlier in my career, know, curiosity demands answering questions, sometimes answering or asking questions. And sometimes asking questions makes you feel like, well, I’m admitting that I don’t know something, right? Or, you know, and I think we all need to get past that, right? And we need to, you know, get people talking and, you know, and get people engaged.

John (13:59)
Right. Right. Yeah.

Bryan (14:14)
And you know, things happen and when we talk about this thing of like, you want to make something someone else’s idea. And it sounds like this really complicated concept of how do I get them to come up with this idea? You know, it’s really not that complicated because when you’re doing something together and you’re talking through things and you’re being curious, those things sort of organically happen. It’s not like you’re pulling some sort of massive like, you know, Yoda like moment on somebody, right? I mean, this is like.

John (14:32)
Right. Right.

Yeah. A mind trick.

Bryan (14:44)
Yeah, this is just something that, you know, if you’re having an open conversation and you’re being curious, then those things happen.

John (14:52)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the, that’s the big difference, right? Is I think there’s a difference between sort of a blank curiosity of, you know, asking someone, well, what keeps you up at night versus, you know, educated curiosity, which is, Hey, I looked at this and I looked at this and what I don’t get is why do those two things work the way they work for you? Or, you know, why do you care about that? Or, you know, it’s a different.

Bryan (15:06)
Right.

Right.

John (15:20)
of curiosity. It means you got to do a little bit of homework first. You can’t be curious without homework.

Bryan (15:24)
It’s a great, yeah.

No, it’s a great point. You can’t be perceived as leaning on someone to just explain everything they know so that you know what they know. I agree. It needs to be exactly what you said, which is like, know that we have a strategic priority in the business to do X, Y, and Z, and logically that fits in here. I don’t see how this other thing fits. How does this other thing fit into that strategy?

John (15:48)
Right, that’s right.

Bryan (15:52)
And that’s something that I mean, it kind of bridging that, you know, thought is something that I, lean on a lot. maybe some people might say that I do too much, but I constantly am reminding when I’m, you know, folks of, know, we said at the beginning of the year, we wanted to do X we set these priorities in order to be able to achieve X. Right. And I keep going back to that, you know, people forget what the sort of guiding principles are and,

John (16:10)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan (16:21)
You know, and I think another piece of advice is to frame things maybe a little bit more than you think necessary. You don’t want to become a broken record, but continuing to frame things up in a way that, you know, we signed up to do X, Y, and Z in support of this OKR, right? And here’s how we’re doing against that,

John (16:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

That’s right.

Yeah, yeah, I just learned I learned something new just now through that little speech, Bryan, that apparently because you gave almost a thumbs up, it threw a thumbs up on the video for you. I don’t know if you saw that or not, but.

Bryan (16:54)
I did see that and there’s also, I don’t know if this one will work here, but this one is pretty rad, it makes me think that Zoom is embedded in Riverside because that’s what this is.

John (17:00)
there you go!

Yeah. Hey,

you know what? It’s not just about internal stakeholders. It’s about how to use the material you got. it didn’t do it for me. I don’t know. It must just be you. All right. Listen, Bryan, we try and keep these relatively short. This has been super impactful. I really appreciate some of the advice you gave. Any last words of wisdom from the great Bryan Smoltz before I let you go on this?

Bryan (17:18)
No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

You know, I think we hit on a lot of it and maybe the last thing I would say, and this goes back to the first thing we talked about, which is, you know, that opportunity that didn’t end the way that I wanted it to end is I encourage everybody also to sort of own the outcomes, right? Like when something doesn’t go, it doesn’t mean you need to feel terrible and shame, but when something doesn’t go your way, you know, think about how you would do that differently next time.

John (17:53)
Yeah.

Bryan (18:04)
Right? Because all you can control is what you do and how you show up and how you engage. You can’t control the fact that someone else has a different personality or someone else has different priorities. And so I bet you can find the answer inside things you can control. And so bring it back to that, you know, and take that control that you have and take a different run at it.

John (18:04)
Yeah.

That’s right.

That’s right.

for sure.

Yeah. Bryan, it is so cool to talk to you. It’s been way too long since you and I have had this kind of conversation. I really appreciate you coming on this podcast with me and sharing some of your wisdom with our community. And let’s do it again sometime. Want to have you back.

Bryan (18:43)
Sounds great, always fun to talk to you, John.

John (18:46)
Thanks, Bryan.

All right, my friend, that was perfect. These are exactly what we do. It’s just a conversation, just sharing a little bit of stuff and, you know, kind of.