John: Well, good morning, Toni, and welcome to another episode of The Partnership Path. Happy to have you here today.

Toni: Happy to be here. I don’t know if we’re allowed to break the sort of fourth wall or whatever, or if I’m allowed to reference this, but I see the branding on the wall now, John. I like it.

John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re trying to be a bit more official. I mean, I even have a whole new environment this season, right? I mean, you know, I’m not sitting in front of my desk. You know why we changed that, right? I got some feedback from some of our listeners that it looks too old man-ish.

Toni: Yeah.

John: To which I said, I am an old man. Like I am an old man sitting in an office. So anyway, we’re trying to be more hip, more, I don’t know, Gen Z, millennial, Gen Y. I don’t know who we’re trying to aim for, but yeah, I’m glad you like it. Nice.

Toni: Yeah.

Toni: I’m making an effort, I’ve got a new headset, it apparently uses jawbone vibration or something, so I’m trying to be more technologically hip. So there you are.

John: Very cool. Yeah, that’s not so bad. I didn’t even notice that. Actually, now that you say that, I’m like, yeah, I can’t even see it. It’s very flush against your face. There you go. All right. Well, listen, this episode, we thought we would focus on that kind of challenging scenario of getting the partner sales team sort of prepared and motivated to help the partnership and to do that internally for your own sales team right to get both sales teams prepared and motivated to sell whatever the partnership is taken to market I know you’ve got some experience in this in fact you’ve probably got some horror stories to tell about this I’d love to kind of start

Toni: Yeah.

John: You know, share some Toni wisdom about that challenge.

Toni: Well, yes, always got a horror story. And, and I think it’s interesting how differently different sales teams are. So in working with one partner, it was, for example, pay to play with their tele sales team. So they say, you can talk to my sales floor, but it’s going to cost you this. And I will tell them to listen to you. So there’s so there’s that.

Toni: Then there is when you go into a room as I did, with a partner who had many, many account managers over the space of a couple of years. And it’s always an issue with partners where they go, oh, here comes another one, here comes another account manager. And I thought that was the biggest challenge. So I said, I’m going to be here for two years. And I wasn’t.

John: Right.

Toni: I was there for about six months. So they went, yeah, okay, proved your point again. But actually, had I thought about what their biggest priority might have been, it wouldn’t have been how long are you gonna be here? It would have been, how are you gonna help me hit my quota? So I only made that mistake once, you know.

Toni: And then there were those for whom, yeah, when you take that approach, there was a sales manager I worked with. He said, I’ve got this one big issue. If you can fix this one big issue, you go speak to anyone in my sales team. So I fixed the issue, earned my stripes that way. And the sales team saw I was an effective problem solver, connector, access to resource for them. So yeah.

John: Yeah. I think you really, you hit the nail on the head with, this is really about understanding what those salespeople care about, whatever the environment is, right? I mean, you’ve got kind of gatekeeper stuff sometimes you got to get through, right? Pay to play the guy who wanted you to solve a problem before you could do it. But then when you’re there, then you’ve got to be super focused on what matters to them.

Toni: Yeah.

John: Which is most often, how do you help me retire my quota? So is what you’re bringing to the table gonna help me get closer to my number? And can I make money on it? Even if it retires quota, if I don’t get paid on it, that’s not helpful. Or if it’s selling way more of somebody else’s stuff and only a little of my stuff, then maybe how do you help kind of balance that out?

Toni: Yeah.

John: I think a lot of channel managers, partner managers, when they finally get in front of those sales teams, they spend a lot of time talking about how great the solution is or how much customers are going to love it or whatever. And while that’s kind of helpful, it doesn’t really make me as a sales rep listen. I’m going to listen when you say, hey, here’s how I can help knock 15% off your quota or here’s how I can help you.

Toni: Yeah.

John: Make your quarterly number or what like then I’m going to be like, oh, okay, talk to me.

Toni: Yeah, now I’m listening.

John: Yeah. And I think that also includes the other challenge. I think a lot of channel managers have is putting together sort of the business case of here’s where my solution fits. Right? Like here’s the target market. Here’s the target customer. Here’s who this thing should be going after so that reps can start to kind of understand where it fits in their territory plan or their account.

Toni: Yeah.

John: Management plan of, right? Cause everyone’s already got one, right? When you walk in the room, every one of those sales reps already has sort of a plan of how they’re going to get to their number. And there’s a gap. I mean, most of them have a gap of like, I know how I’m going to get to 75%, but that last 25% I still got to find. And I think that’s your challenge is how do I make my stuff help them make that gap?

Toni: Yeah.

Toni: And I think just thinking about what you had to say there, there is that element of understanding where your solution fits in the wider context of a customer environment and how your partner’s services, solutions, hardware, whatever they’re going to wrap around that comes into play. So yeah, it’s about much more than the saying.

John: Right.

Toni: This is what we’re launching. You must sell it.

John: Yeah, I mean, it’s a nuance, right? But it’s critical, right? If you get that wrong, you’re not gonna get anywhere. And you are 100% right on the whole issue of if it’s me as the vendor channel manager talking to the partner sales team, and what they’re selling is something that wraps around what my vendor product is.

Toni: Yeah.

John: I have to talk about how that product, because they don’t care about the commission on that product. They care about their stuff. They care about their services because that’s how they get comped, or they care about their platform or their application or their hardware that they’re going to wrap around it. That’s what they care about. And if you don’t know how $1 of your stuff drives whatever number of dollars of their stuff and you can’t talk to that, you’re not getting their attention. They’re not going to listen.

Toni: No.

Toni: And so when we were talking in our last series, we did touch upon that, you know, what are you compensated on? So how, how might we broaden that out in the context of, you know, thinking about a sales rep and the different, I guess, revenue streams, margin, you know, instances they might need to light up. I’m trying to think about how we might construct that conversation.

John: Yeah.

John: Well, I mean, I think first it starts with that transparency, right, of actually asking whoever it is you’re working with what the sales team compensation model looks like. And then working with your counterpart to put together essentially a value prop for the sales team, right? I mean, this is internal selling. And I mean, so far we’ve been focused on

Toni: Yeah.

John: I’m the vendor channel manager kind of trying to sell the partner sales team, right on how to do it. But, but that applies internally as well. I got to convince my internal sales team, why they should include my partner’s stuff when they sell our stuff, even though they are maybe not getting paid on it, but how does that help advance their quota retirement? How does that help advance their SPFs or whatever might be available to them?

Toni: Yeah.

Toni: And I think one element in that is that are you easy to work with or is that, can you make that partner easy to work with? So having done that, presenting a partner internally into a vendor, and I remember I had one partner that was really unpopular. They were like, no, nobody wants to deal with them. But because I figured out a way to make them really easy to work with, I was like, this is it. And it fits within…

Toni: Our campaign framework and it fits within these different, you know, products that we needed to kind of grow.

John: Yeah.

Toni: The sales team actually went, okay, then, and they gave it a try. And I mean, what else can you do apart from that? And that’s the best you can hope for, that you’ve, you know, demonstrated a use case, demonstrated that it’s a good fit, and that you can add some extra sort of power to it in terms of resourcing or supporting. And the rest is really up to them.

John: Right. And I think it’s that it goes both ways. Sometimes there’s baggage, right? Sometimes your own internal sales team has baggage about this other partner or whoever’s hard to work with. But the reality is they maybe had one or two bad experiences and then they’ve stereotyped the whole organization.

Toni: Yeah.

John: And sometimes just getting rid of some of that baggage can help, right? I mean, I’ve had a very similar situation to what you described where we had a partner that our sales team just didn’t want to work with. And it was really more about historical baggage than it was about reality.

Toni: Yeah.

John: And when you actually did sit down and say, look, here’s how we’ve changed things. Here’s how we’re gonna make this a little bit better for you. It changed the whole dynamic. And suddenly you went from an adversarial relationship to one that was productive.

Toni: Yeah.

John: I think the other thing too, is I think a lot of times channel managers get wrapped up in selling the benefits of the solution. And instead they should be selling the benefits of the partnership.

Toni: And by that, I mean, how is working with my partner going to help you, sales rep, make more money, retire more quota, have an easier time selling to your customers, increase your relevance with your customers, whatever it might be. But you have to shift from the product or the solution to the partnership and what that brings to the table.

Toni: Yeah, I think that’s a good point because if you’re constantly having to, I guess, fight for the value prop or fight for that mindshare, it becomes exhausting. And there comes a point where you might think, is it actually worth it? But as you rightly say, if you’re thinking about the partnership and how that strengthens your value proposition, then there’s definitely more you can do there.

John: Well, listen, I know we’re coming up on time. I know I have to let you go in a minute here, but one last question for you. If you were going to give one tip to a new channel manager or channel sales rep, what would that tip be?

Toni: I think when you asked me that question, my thoughts are turning to all those different horror stories I mentioned and the biggest lesson for me would be know where you can be most effective. So don’t try to be all things to all people, identify where you can make the most impact and kind of make that your stronghold.

Toni: So if you, and for me, it was being able to be an effective problem solver and connector and making sure that the solution fit in the right environments, I guess. So it’s about knowing where you’re going to be most effective and then pursuing that.

John: I love that. That’s fantastic advice. You know, and I, I couldn’t agree more. I think finding your place and what you bring to the table is the most important thing. So, Toni, thank you so much for taking the time today. Greatly appreciated, wonderful conversation and, uh, look forward to chatting with you again in the future.

Toni: It’s been a pleasure.