John (00:01.666)
Well, hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Partnership Path in Real Life. I am so excited to have you on the show with us today, I really appreciate you taking time out to come and talk with us. But before we get going too far, I want to give you a chance to introduce yourself to our listening audience. So tell us a little bit about who Viv is and how long you’ve been working with partners.

Vivienne (00:24.941)
Excellent, so hi everyone and just great to be here today. So who is Viv? I’m a client director at one of Microsoft’s partners. I’ve been in the channel in and around various roles for a very long time now. I won’t say I won’t give away my age, but worked at some of the biggest global partners that you can come across.

John (00:44.12)
Hahaha.

Vivienne (00:50.777)
I started out in an alliance role where I was responsible for the partner’s relationship with Microsoft and then moved to a client director roles subsequently. I deal with the end user customer as it were.

John (01:06.241)
Okay, all right, excellent. And for more years than we care to actually talk about, right? Both you and I, we’ve got the…

Vivienne (01:12.648)
Exactly, exactly. I did a video the other day when I mentioned the number of years.

John (01:19.809)
We have the scars and the wrinkle lines to prove how long we’ve been doing this. So yeah, excellent. Well, listen, I’m so glad that you’re here. Today we’re here to talk about the episode that Tony and I just did on winning competitive mindshare or managing competitive mindshare and partnerships. I know you listened to the episode. so I guess maybe the best way for us to start is for me to just say, tell me.

Vivienne (01:23.304)
to… it’s not me.

John (01:46.85)
What you thought when you listened to that episode, what really stood out to you as stuff where you’re like, yeah, I got something to say about that.

Vivienne (01:54.705)
I think for me, it has to be the cows. It’s like, I totally understood the farming analogy that Tony brought up. I really liked the whole gardening analogy and something that actually kind of made me really think of a deal that I’ve done recently. Yeah, it was in your garden, you have different people and different things growing and so on and so forth.

John (01:58.83)
Yes.

John (02:04.279)
Ha

John (02:10.444)
Yeah.

John (02:16.045)
Vivienne (02:24.742)
And something that I think is really important in the garden and in life is the seasons and in partnerships in particular. So for me, I was working at an organization, working with a client that was quite new to me. And we were in that kind of spring season of, let’s just scatter all the seeds that we can. We’ve got all of these features and all of these products like robot all in, sewer sticks.

John (02:30.477)
Yeah?

John (02:49.655)
Yep.

Vivienne (02:54.021)
it was going okay and we were starting to kind of have things start to grow a little bit and then all of sudden their CEO comes along and goes hey I want a puppy and this is where to me it was just like my goodness like we know nothing about this organization we think we do we’ve started building you know a few lunches those kind of things we’ve introduced the tools but we haven’t done a deep dive we’ve done no design we knew nothing about anything that was going on

John (03:16.695)
Right?

Vivienne (03:23.952)
And it was like, we’re not just choosing you as a partner to help the puppy and train the puppy and you can be the face of the puppy. But I’ve told everyone and he told the media and it was one of those like, my goodness, what’s happening and considering everything going on in the tech world at the moment. It’s like, think a lot of people will probably guess that is, you know, we’re doing AI. That’s my new like, this is the shiny puppy coming along.

John (03:34.35)
my goodness.

John (03:38.219)
Yeah.

John (03:46.605)
Right.

Vivienne (03:52.741)
And what happened is, as the client director, I was the one that had to go back and go, well, you know, you’ve got these trees, they’ve been growing for years and years, they’re covered with ivy, it’s hiding the fact that you’ve got no fences, and so on and so forth and so forth. And I think it’s for me, the way that we handle it, because we were quite a new partner in that relationship.

was something that we were able to do because we were in the right season to be able to. We weren’t expected to know everything about them. So we were a partner that could go, I mean, we went hand in hand with Microsoft and said, look, you know, we know that you think that this new shiny puppy is going to be just the price of the puppy, but actually, you know, here’s the food, here’s the barber jacket that, you know, your head of marketing wants to put photos of and so on and so forth. And it’s that kind of

John (04:23.627)
Right.

John (04:40.012)
Right.

Vivienne (04:44.169)
understanding that people come to your garden with different requirements. just really, really aware of like who’s coming and when they’re coming. it’s like, you know, you’ve got this person coming to do their garden party and show everything off once a year. That could be the most important stakeholder, whereas actually all of the people just maintaining the trees that are just growing and so on and so forth are also important to you. I think that was something that really came to mind.

John (04:48.545)
For sure.

John (04:59.63)
Yeah.

John (05:09.655)
Yeah.

Vivienne (05:13.234)
Partly because we have a green garden and we’re getting poppy, but partly because it’s just really, cool.

John (05:13.558)
I love that.

John (05:17.749)
Yeah. Well, and I think, look, I think it raises that possibility too. Like when somebody in the partnership suddenly shifts direction like that or changes the focus like that, it puts you on your back foot for this competition thing as well, right? Like if you guys hadn’t have handled that well and been able to essentially make his puppy happy, someone else

Vivienne (05:43.368)
Yeah.

John (05:45.174)
would have, right? Some other puppy owner could have come in and convinced the CEO that their puppy was actually better for the garden, right? I mean, like that’s, it’s so critical to recognize everything you do has a competitive element to it, right? That it’s not just about solving that particular puppy issue. It’s about doing it in a way that keeps the cows out of the

out of the garden from getting in,

Vivienne (06:15.944)
Totally, totally. And I think as well it was that fear because when, like after the initial meeting, I was just like, my goodness, I’ve only met this person once and I’m going to have to tell him he can’t have his puppy. And it was just, it was that gut reaction of just like, how am I possibly going to do that? And then bringing my team around me to be like, look, we have to be straight up. We have to tell him, but how are we going to do it?

John (06:17.9)
Yeah.

John (06:29.175)
Yeah.

Vivienne (06:41.353)
who are we going to involve? for me, because we’ve got a lot of experience in this, I recruited his senior leadership team to help us tell him. Rather than it coming from us as the partner, was I jointly, along with Microsoft, and along with, you know, we worked throwing his team under the bus by going, hey, look at all these weeds and look at all this stuff. It was, you know, we all have to jointly say, you know, maybe you’ve misunderstood how destructive a puppy can be.

John (07:11.629)
Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, that’s it’s interesting. So you mentioned that about recruiting some of his senior leadership to help in that. We actually have an episode coming up a little bit later in the season where we’re going to talk about managing internal stakeholders. So that’s a great tie into that of, know, like you’re constantly having to think about how do I leverage the environment that those people are in?

Vivienne (07:11.784)
you

John (07:40.098)
to help influence and move them in the right direction so that we keep the partnership healthy for sure. Excellent. All right. So the gardening analogy was good. there other, was there anything else in the episode that, yeah. Other things that kind of stood out for you when we talk about trying to protect your mind share?

Vivienne (07:47.561)
Absolutely,

Yeah, I think something that came up, I think, right at the end of your episode was around the what does your partner say about you when you’re not in the room? And I think it’s something people don’t discuss enough. But also, it’s not just your what does your partner say is what does your team say? What do the other people in the organization say? Because I know

John (08:14.796)
Yeah.

Vivienne (08:25.606)
You discussed a lot about competitors. It’s not just your competitor that you think of as like opposing companies. It’s all those other things that can influence and that can draw resource. it’s, think people have a fear of getting negative feedback or perceived negative feedback. I think something that happened with me a couple of years ago, I had a change of leadership and the manager that I was working with who came in,

John (08:43.863)
Yeah, yeah.

Vivienne (08:54.953)
We did a big exercise in kind of like feeling safe in the team and feeling belonging within your actual team. And something that we did, which we were all slightly terrified of, is talk about like the worst client relationships, the worst partnerships that you’ve got, very, very openly. And so we kind of started that and we weren’t sure where it was going. And then as a phase two of that,

John (09:12.427)
Yeah.

Vivienne (09:24.038)
we decided to reach out to those partnerships in quite a managed way to find out what they were saying about us kind of when we weren’t in room. So rather than, so if it was me, I was like, I’ve got that gut reaction that person doesn’t gel with me for a certain reason, you know, they don’t like my service, whatever. Instead of me reaching out being like, hey, you know, is there an issue? It’s like we’re to choose the people in the team that were the best place or that we thought they were best place. So

John (09:32.535)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vivienne (09:53.659)
Some of it I had my manager do, some of it we had an operations manager and we were like, can you go and ask the ops people what they really think and, you know, take a coffee or do it in a very kind of one-on-one way and also to move those people so they’re not in the room, they’re not in front of their whole team, they’re not kind of having to put on that performance and just going back that one-on-one feedback and then we did this big exercise where we collated it all.

John (10:01.975)
Yeah.

Vivienne (10:19.592)
We did compare it because we had customer satisfaction surveys that went out every year and everyone, and of course, everyone. We actually compared it and there was no comparison. It’s like the stuff that was tick box fine. We found out we had issues with like stupid admin things that nobody really thought was an issue. So they never told us and it actually became.

John (10:25.398)
Of course.

John (10:41.101)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vivienne (10:45.991)
the biggest year for me in terms of financial growth in the organization. Just as we literally, we rooted out a load of issues and because there was no blame and nobody was caring. It wasn’t like that personal, you have to try and get out of 10 or above. It was literally like, what is actually going on here? So, so we, we could make some small tweaks. We actually ended up, terminated one of my clients because

John (10:50.657)
Really?

John (11:07.02)
Yeah.

Vivienne (11:14.152)
they were drawing so much resource from the team. And we actually went back to them and we were like, look, you know, we can either renegotiate the contract, but actually, it’s not, you know, it’s not really viable for any of us. So, although we still had other services with that particular organization, we were like, actually, that service isn’t working for any of us. And I think it was such a relief to the entire team that we were no longer having to focus on this negative work all the time.

that it kind of re-energized Oprah one. I think that kind of off the cuff comment at the end of your episode, it’s like, what are people saying? It’s like, don’t think enough people actually ask that question and go back and ask it again and again and again until almost you’re blue in the face of like, this is what my customers think of me and I know this because I’ve asked them so many times in this partnership that.

John (11:44.546)
Right.

John (12:01.302)
Yeah.

Vivienne (12:09.424)
that it’s like something isn’t going to come to me as a surprise. think that’s something that really resonated with me personally, having gone through that. Yeah.

John (12:12.001)
Yeah.

John (12:16.781)
That’s huge. in the last two minutes, you’ve given this awesome master class in competitive mind share. That element is so cool. I really want to spend a minute on this, Just like the way I would paraphrase what you just described is essentially giving your partner permission to tell you the truth, right? So that then you can actually respond

Vivienne (12:27.058)
Thank you.

Vivienne (12:42.536)
totally.

John (12:46.56)
in a way that’s helpful, which might include terminating the relationship. But very often, it’s just about fixing things that you didn’t even know were broken because they wouldn’t tell you, whether that’s because we weren’t asking the right questions or the environment under which we asked the questions was uncomfortable or whatever it is. we teach this. I do a lot of training with direct sales reps, too. And one of the things that we

that we teach direct sales reps is how to give the prospect permission to say no, right? To say, yeah, I’m not, quit calling me. I’m not interested, right? And too often sales reps don’t actually give, they don’t create an environment where that’s okay. And what you’ve highlighted for me is something I haven’t necessarily thought of really clearly is partner people do the same thing.

Vivienne (13:23.257)
yeah.

John (13:41.398)
with our partners, we don’t necessarily always create an environment where the partner feels comfortable telling us, hey, this is the part that’s not working for me. Instead, it’s they complain about the stuff that they think will help get what they want. They whine about in a manipulative way. It’s like having a two-year-old that they just find a way. And that’s not healthy for either one of us. So I absolutely love what you were saying there. That is,

massively important for people to hear. And I love the technique that you use. That’s a great tip for people to walk away with is, hey, look, if you really want to protect the mind share that you have, one of the first things that you should do is create an environment that allows the partner to tell you the truth and what you talked about, having other, know, purposely pipping specific people to go ask those questions. That’s, that’s, it’s masterful. I absolutely love that.

Vivienne (14:37.705)
Yeah, I’d never done that before. And also asking them specifically about the things we thought were going wrong. It’s like, normally we’re all like trying to spin the positive all the time. It’s like, no, go on ask, like, go to them and say, my gut feeling is that you don’t like this contract for whatever reason. It’s like, what’s going on? And it’s like, that was mind blowing to me because, and I think

John (14:48.375)
That’s right.

Vivienne (15:03.376)
coupled with the team safety element, it’s like we had to feel safe as a team, that whatever came back, we were going to sort as a team. And I think that was a really interesting environment because the fact that we were able to create that meant that whatever came back, there was nobody there being like, no, sorry, that was me or whatever. It was just like, right, this has happened. What are we going to do in the future?

John (15:08.386)
That’s right.

That’s right.

John (15:26.155)
Yep. What do we do about it? That’s right.

Vivienne (15:28.242)
positive attitude of it’s just like it’s everyone in the organisation is never one person is really important to.

John (15:36.866)
Yeah. Man, Viv, like this was huge. I’m so excited about what you shared. And as you know, we try and keep these episodes relatively short so that people can come in, get a quick tip or a trick. Today, you gave them gold. I love it. Anyone listening is going to write this down and they’re going to try it with their partner. So I absolutely love that. So we’ve kind of reached time.

Vivienne (15:46.897)
early.

John (16:02.185)
Is there any last-minute words of advice? I know you came in prepared with a number of things. Is there anything else you want to quickly share before we close out?

Vivienne (16:09.134)
I don’t think so. think for me, I’m going to be talking about trees and flowers and the farms of the UK and the differences between Central America and so on and so forth forevermore with my clients. But think the partnership there is one that we can probably share with most people who have some relation to it. But yeah, that was it for me.

John (16:33.995)
I love it. Well, Viv, thank you so much for coming on the show with us. I really appreciate it. I hope we can have you back again as a guest sometime soon.

Vivienne (16:41.384)
That would be fantastic.

John (16:43.853)
Bye bye.

Vivienne (16:44.733)
Bye.