012 - Alliance Manager Tactical Tips - Introducing Justin Bartels

Welcome to 2021!

And we're back with back-to-back episodes and a new episode every week!

Today we're getting tactical for the frontline. Where the magic happens.

Because you know what? All this alliance theory really doesn't matter if you can't make things happen in the field.

And we are elated to announce our newest co-host, Justin Bartels! Justin is the Strategic Alliances Manager at Drift and is (in Jared's opinion) a BD savant.

He's here to make sure we don't get too carried away in the clouds and can implement these ideas on the ground. Where numbers are made or missed.

And we end on possibly the most empowering note of our 12 episodes to date.

So buckle up - let's say goodbye to 2020 and the hangover month of January and welcome 2021 PartnerUp style.

This episode of PartnerUp is brought to you in partnership with the Cloud Software Association. The community of 4,000 partnerships professional helping you advance your profession and career.

Listen on:

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Transcript

Justin Bartels  00:19
Right pump this up a little bit,

Jared Fuller  00:21
pump this up a little bit because I love the intro music. But I hope the community does too, because that's pretty sweet. Like I spent a bunch of time on that intro music. But what is up 2020 we're here. Before we hop in, I feel like I mean, everyone's probably feeling this way in January. But I said this last week, and I'm going to put it out there on the air. January, don't worry 2020 one's going to be better January was just a hangover month, right? Up to 2020. So 2020 one's gonna be much better. We're here in 2021. January is just a hangover month, we're gonna get over it. But Welcome back to partner up. We're actually recording back to back episodes, there's a bunch of new stuff coming, that we haven't even talked about yet. And before I get into the stuff, and like the episode and the guest, and I have some announcements, so let's, let's do some business. We actually have a new co host here on partner up. And before I get into him, I do want to say massive shout out to Kevin rahasia. Kevin and I've been friends for a very, very long time. He just took a new role over at Active Campaign and has been busting his butt to, you know, take them to the moon and probably public soon. If you're paying attention to them from the sidelines. I bet they IPO here soon. So Kevin couldn't commit the time, but he wishes everyone well. We're both members of the cap cloud software Association, close friends. And you know, thank him so much for his contribution. The guests in the commentary and just a unique human Alaskan crab fishermen that invested in the iPhone that you know, it's crazy. It's a crazy story. Love that man. But today we have the new co host here. His name is Justin Bartels. Justin Bartels, welcome to partner up.

Justin Bartels  02:09
Thanks, Jared, thanks for having me. Thanks for making me a part of the podcast,

Jared Fuller  02:12
this is gonna be so much fun. So Justin, and I have been working together for a couple years. And I, I just, I love Justin, he can do a little bit of everything thrown into a deck to give a presentation to a bunch of executives or a field team, BD sales, marketing, partnerships. And Justin's actually here at drift two. So we probably know each other a little bit too well, from a working relationship standpoint. But Justin, how did how did we end up? You know, we ended up working together because of partnerships. So maybe give your version of that story? Where were you at at the time? And how did we end up? You know, talking? Yeah, I think it's true, Jared fashion. I mean, you were trying to start a partnership, right. Like, I think that i think i was i was a big fanboy of DC and dg and the content that Drake was putting out and was drinking the Kool Aid. And I was at a at a marketing agency, marketing tech agency at the time. And of course, like, took the free version of drift threw it on the website and was like, okay, there's something to this, and I, you know, I'm getting invested. And then I started to see it pop up in our clients, you know, and they started using it because it was kind of a, you know, similar client base and similar customer. And then I'm trying to remember how our paths directly crossed, I don't know if it was in Partnership negotiations from one of your reps or whatnot. But we got in touch, and you were pressing hard. And I was like, Look, I'm trying, I'm trying to start a partnership here, you know, wasn't highest on the totem pole. But I was trying to, you know, to make the internal case. And I think at that point in time, we just kept running into each other at conferences, and each each step of the way, you're making a little bit more and a little bit more progression with the drift partner program. And then, you know, at some point, I was like, Okay, I gotta I gotta jump on this rocket ship. And this guy is too passionate and too persistent for me to not see something here. So kudos to you for staying where we are right I mean, passionate, persistent, crazy, but you must be crazy yourself because you uprooted you know life in, you know, Montana, and moved out to Boston and started crushing it here at drift and then pandemic hit. So moved to the big city during the middle of you know, not in the middle of COVID. But before COVID hit little Did you know, but I'm so excited to have Justin here. He's, you weren't a theater major, but you were involved in theater?

Justin Bartels  04:31
Yeah, after the fact. So I was a Yeah, you know, you call it you take those core credits you have to write to fulfill, to round out your, you know, well rounded education, so to speak, and I had taken like an acting for non majors course. And out of that, it was very impactful, right? And very impactful class and had a great instructor and I was like, Alright, after I'm done and I get a nine to five I want to sort of take some acting classes and there was an acting class at the time, but there was improv classes and through that I got involved in improv theatre. And started taking it and started getting really involved and started teaching it. And so I have a background in theater and improv there. But I actually preferred teaching it more than I like doing it for some odd reason. But

Jared Fuller  05:11
well, I'm I love the the stage presence, if you will, you know, how you present yourself, in your inquisitiveness around, you know, partnerships and all the various aspects of it. Also a CrossFit instructor as well.

Justin Bartels  05:28
Yeah, functional fitness, fiend of sorts, you know,

Jared Fuller  05:31
love that love that I

Justin Bartels  05:32
mean, oh, go with it.

Jared Fuller  05:33
I'm wearing my campaign shirt. You know, nobody cares work harder. There you go, ran my 15 miles this weekend. So we get along in that regard. And, yeah, this is gonna be a fun partnership here on partner up. And today, what we want to dive into for the topic is, you know, managing these big alliances, we've talked to a bunch of executives, you know, VPS, of partnerships and directors and partner operations leaders, and then some legends like Bobby Knapp or P kapooya. But there's a whole bunch of people that are assigned with like, some director of partnerships, VP of partnerships gets a wild harebrained idea like, hey, let's go partner with Microsoft, let's go partner with Salesforce. And then someone like Justin comes in, to either crush it or fail in flames. I mean, it's there's no book for this, right? There's no book for the role of Alliance manager, right. So someone that's responsible for the day to day, you know, driving partnerships with a sumo. So that's we're going to do that we're gonna come into this because your role currently, Justin, as you own the Adobe relationship here at drift. And, you know, I think you've learned a ton. And I've learned a ton working with you around some of those frontline tips. So we'll kind of go into the Alliance manager, you know, tactical tips here, for sure. Sure, on how to do that. And,

Justin Bartels  06:49
you know,

Jared Fuller  06:50
where should we start, I kind of feel like, maybe I'll set the framework of if you're going to sign a big deal with a sumo with a Salesforce and Microsoft, you know, if you're on the infrastructure side, and Amazon or a Google or Oracle, or whoever, you know, you got to start with kind of like the plan, the war plan, if you will. And you sat down and worked on that together, maybe we can kind of talk through like, a lot of times these deals get done, but there's an absence of how do we get to the number? Right, we let's start there, like, let's start with the plan.

Justin Bartels  07:29
Right, right. I think I mean, we're learning a lot, right? And we've learned a lot this last year, I think, if if we were to go back, right? And if I were to say, hey, Justin, this is I'd recommend starting it. Absent him how much how close, we got to it, I'd say you know, double down on where you're already having wins, right? I think, especially with a big Sumo being a smaller duck and a bigger pond, it's easy to get, you know, carried away with Wow, there's so much potential of so many people I could be working with across this organization, right? But really, where am I already seeing successes, you know, and where, what can I do to optimize that and almost have that automate, or almost keep it running to produce similar results of what you know you're doing in the past. And then from there, what's gonna be the next best group, and I think that is, you know, is square one where I, where I would start is, you know, what's gonna be our 8020? Who are the groups that are really going to resonate with this partner vision and this partner value hypothesis? And let's really make sure we nail those before we try and boil the ocean with something bigger?

Jared Fuller  08:26
Well, it sounds so simple, but I think in tactical terms, what you're really talking about, is having a tearing strategy for the account for the partner. Right? So what that means is, like, you know, we came up with a framework of, there's kind of four tiers of types of accounts based on firma graphics, their tech profile, what kinds of technologies they were using company size, geo, and we kind of built out, you know, tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four, we said, Hey, we're gonna play here. And that's right. You know, that's strategy. I'm a big fan of this book called playing to win. And, you know, strategy is choice. A lot of people complicate strategy that is a big planning doc strategy is simply choice. And we made a choice, here's where we're going to play. Right. So like, where do you win? Where are you seeing success? We already had a successful integration, and we started with a tearing strategy. I think that's the first thing you have to do is okay, where are we going to play? And then the next thing it actually, let's clarify that when we say where we're going to play, there's actually two roles there. Right? There's the accounts that we're trying to get our sellers connected to. And then there is the people in the Alliance partnership, right, like the people at, you know, Salesforce, Adobe, whatever. How did you think about breaking that down?

Justin Bartels  09:42
Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, first off, going off of the group where we had a lot of success, you know, we were able to carry over the existing knowledge of who we are and what we do. And I'd say that's probably the biggest challenge in starting a new partnership is just getting the word out about the partnership to the parties that matter and what it means for them. Think with us, we started with the group's right that already newest from our existing relationship with Marketo, and our existing partnership with Marketo. And then from there we tactically look at, okay, who has the relationships of the people we're trying to work with this was a sales and is a sales driven partnership. So ideally, you know, we were we canvassed the, you know, the ecosystem that is Adobe, or the organization that is Adobe, and looked for the groups that had the relationships with the types of accounts we wanted to be working with and have on as clients, and that really set our narrow focus, right, and it helped to say like, is this person worth our time? You know, is this person worth investing in building relationship with? Or are we just gonna spend a bunch of cycles, and there's not going to be a lot of fit? And then there's gonna be a lot of friction? Is that what you saw? Is that what you would advise with, you know, somebody who's going through this for maybe the first time?

Jared Fuller  10:48
Well, I think what you did a good job of is you You broke it down into titles, right? So who were the people that we needed to work with, because there's account executives, there's account managers, there's solutions, consultants, there's Customer Success managers, there's title, title, title, title, title. And you had a cool phrase that I loved, it was like account based business development, which we could probably have a whole episode on this, just just on account based BD, because ABM is all the rage, what the heck is a B, BD or a VP or whatever the heck we want to call it is like, breaking down that Alliance account into the contacts, right, like, you know, companies buy, but the reality is, is that you sell the people, right, you target companies, you sell the people and the people at, you know, the Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, whoever, we really had a structured persona there. And then you've actually even tracked, right, like, how many contacts I mean, last I checked, you know, you've met with over like, 180 separate contacts at the Alliance partner?

Justin Bartels  11:50
Yeah, we're going a little bit or the I guess the the thesis is that, you know, at the end of the day, we want introductions in a new account says partnership, since this is a sales driven partnership. But you know, for somebody who we're meeting for the first time that has very deep relationships with maybe this enterprise account, and is very cautious of controlling all the variables, including the partners that are involved and account. You know, working towards a direct introduction might be a big step. So what we've put in place is this funnel that, you know, tracks how far they along with the progression. So step one is are they do they know of us at all at all? Like, do they know that drift exists where a partner and basically the one line value prop of what we can do? And the second stage in that funnel is okay, have they have a deep dive? Like have we really set the time maybe on a 30 minute call or on a team enablement to share with them? What drift can do specifically for their types of accounts for their role, specifically, how we partnered together and what the plays are. And then from there, have they worked with us on an account like either do they have overlapping accounts that our customer desires, and we're trying to grow them and expand them, and we're working on opportunities together? Or have they introduced us to one of their accounts and vice versa? I think that, you know, has worked well, and not overstepping our bounds too quickly, with some groups and burning, maybe that first impression, so to speak. And that first at bat and our brand reputation within you know, Adobe themselves, and really making sure that it's kind of consumable bite size fashions to progress them along that relationship to the end goal where we want to be.

Jared Fuller  13:17
It's, um, it's really great and interesting to see how those relationships at the front line, you know, make or break these types of partnerships. It's both, I mean, you have to have that executive alignment. That's key, but where the intros come is from those, you know, peer to peer relationships, you know, almost. And even beyond that, Justin, one of the things that I've seen is, like, we've talked with, like Brittany from jeetu crowd about, you know, how to sell partnerships internally. So when I say peer to peer relationships, like, obviously, you're working with a Partner Manager, you know, at the Alliance account, right, like you have a counterpart there. But there's another level or layer, I think, where the magic really starts to happen is if you can build those peer to peer relationships with, you know, the CSM, or the account manager and your account executive inside of your company, maybe talk through, you know, we've kind of gone from, like, account plan, and then like, which types of contacts and then we got to get the account executives to talk to the right party at the Alliance account, maybe some tips on how to, like, build those relationships to where you, you know, you have to be there a lot and probably too much like, that's one of the things we're working on. But, you know, maybe some examples without giving away names of how you've built that peer to peer relationship.

Justin Bartels  14:39
For sure, for sure. So I think that, you know, the best kind of model have is almost a similar funnel model, right to what we just described what the relationship when you're looking at your sellers, you're gonna have a variety of people who have, you know, a variety of partnerships experience, some maybe enterprise sellers are really good at partnering and they know how to have an account synced they know how to come up with a plan. They know To work with a partner, some maybe their first rodeo, and they're very cautious, and they don't know what to do, per se, and how to do this and who they can trust and how much information they may be able to divulge. So on our end of things, you know, I'm kind of also keeping track of that as well like this, you know, this rep, you know, that owns and account we're trying to get into, have they partnered with, you know, our partners before, have they been through this motion. If they have, I can probably, you know, just pair them up over email or, you know, quick slack and let them run because they know the rules of engagement. But if they're newer to the process, I might have to handhold them a little bit more in the beginning. And that's the upfront cost, you know, just cost the partnership and getting the motion going and enabling internal teams and naming your partner. But over time, you know, you can, the ideal state is you have teams that have overlapping territories, which, you know, is also a big consideration. And this is like, how many actual relationships and accounts? Do they overlap? And then from there, what is the what is the Define motion? And are they unable to run with it, I think in that ideal state, you have a lot, you know, sellers or CSM or account teams with a lot of overlapping accounts. And they understand how to help each other out the joint value prop and how the partnership helps the customer and they able to just kind of run and connect on their own keeping you in the loop, of course, for reporting processes and, and making sure everything's humming and coming in play mediator if there's a little tension. But yeah, that's that's kind of how I've broken it down, you know, viewing our internal relationships in the progression with the partnership, almost as the same as you know, how do we enable and progressive partner externally to any tips you'd add there, or anything you've seen that you would do if you're jumping a new partnership like that.

Jared Fuller  16:37
I mean, it really does come down to the relationship that you build. So you know, you have trust with a number of folks inside there that you know, can rely on you. Because you've you've come to them before and demonstrated that you have high standards, right, that you'll put the customer first you're going to make them look good. And they understand the why. I think that's probably where I over index. I mean, when I started, and every time I've started a big Alliance, and I'm, I'm typically the person that's going to break down the door on the Alliance, like I'm going to go and build it from zero to something not too great, but zero to something where like, we're at least doing stuff together. I'm going to really over index on on the Y or the Simon Sinek. Like, why is this so important? What's the grandiose vision, and I'm gonna make sure that rep cares. I'm going to make sure that rep understands how they make money, right? Yeah, the best partnerships are not steeped in how your company helps the bigger company make more money, the best partnerships, in my opinion, are steeped in how you help that account director that account executive, the account manager, the CSM, that person on the frontline believe that this is something that helps them meet their goals. And if you can start it off that way, where they believe this is a different type of partnership. Like, I got to imagine if you're at Microsoft, which is the largest partner centric organization in the world, I mean, just look at Microsoft Teams versus Slack, right? Because the reason why I would want to talk about this all day today is such so many partner stories in the slack vs. Teams thing. You know, Salesforce bought Slack, because I mean, slack kind of needed to Microsoft's been eating their lunch. Hello World, like, probably most of the people here like what are you talking about? I use slack. Well, yeah, Microsoft has over 100 million weekly active users slack has like 12. Yeah. Why? Because Microsoft has the largest partner organization in the world, right? They were able to leverage distribution. But my point is that those people inside of Microsoft have, I mean, dozens hundreds of partners vying for their to it's technically 1000s of partners vying for their attention. So they kind of need to know at the very beginning, that you better be bringing something different to the table. Right? I mean, you've heard me say this stuff, and I actually do it intentionally. It's like, oh, Jared, just being crazy. But I actually say to my partners, I am your number one partner. I put that Jedi mind trick in their brain, like, we are your number one partner, we are a different type of partner. Because I don't partner. I don't build alliances with companies where I'm number two, number three, number four, number 20. Like I come in, and I say this, to that extent, you have to pick the right one, which was I think, Episode One, on how to pick the right Sumo. And then I make sure the reps understand that, like, I know a bunch of people are vying for your time, here's why we're the most important partner to you, here's what's in it for you. And, you know, we're going to be doing a lot of business together a lot, right? So pay attention. Let's go and then you know, obviously, pre COVID show up with swag, you know, the drops, I go in the office, meet them all face to face. And then you know, getting the getting their account list, right? I mean, it all comes back down to gaining the trust to get their account list from them. I mean, you can get some of that stuff from the partner org but a lot of it You got to go get yourself. And I mean, I remember, I remember going to Portland for Marketo. And there were, there were reps that I sat down with. And like, literally, I was like, Alright, so you love the story. They're like, yeah, that sounds great. I'm like, let's pull up Salesforce. And I actually had them pull up their account list in front of me, and we would write intros into those accounts. So that's where I over index, probably I lead with that vision and that passion, to get people excited and to care, because you got to stand out. I mean, they got it.

Justin Bartels  20:33
Yeah. And I think like, I think it's worth a term that there's almost like the partnerships rule of five, where every individual agent within an account team, whether it be a CSM or a really in their head, like we all store five partners that we're going to work with, you know, in a tech company, it's probably to technology, or two or three technology partners, and in two or three, so you know, channel service partners that helped me out. And, you know, these big ecosystems, it's easy to get just caught up being in, you know, place number 15, and 16. Because you're playing by the rules, and you're, you're playing like the same playbook, everybody else's. But especially in those big systems, I think you've got to come in and come in swinging and say, you know, really find the group where the incentives make sense and take that time to map it out, as you're approaching the partnership of like, Okay, I know, this makes sense for the customer. But is this gonna make sense for the CSM? That was a relationship or the s, you know, solution consultants, that's, that's architecting this whole thing? Or is it going to align with the incentives that he that's trying to grow the account. And then from there, you know, really making sure like, you get in with their top five, you know, get in that top five mental model of the partners they work with?

Jared Fuller  21:33
There's, um, this was really important in the beginning, I don't know if it's important now. And we haven't actually talked about it on the pod. I think Michelle, who was also on our team, she presented this at the cloud software Association, a couple years back at their annual conference, can't wait till that's back and live in person. But she presented on it like how to find your black swan moment. So it's like a Chris boss thing. For those of you who aren't aware, Chris Voss never split the difference author, obviously required reading for people negotiating big, big deals. Much more so than even account executives, I promise, you're in partnerships, you got to read this book. What he talks about is he talks about the Black Swan moment. And that's that moment where there's this independent truth that exists, but no parties realize until like, it comes to light. And I think you have to find that black swan moment to make those you know, csms, or ease, or whoever your target contact is that the partner really care. And the Black Swan moment for us was really, when we figured out how our product in our partnership drove the individual contributors key metric that they were paid on. Right, it was like, hey, the company is trying to do X with, you know, core metric. Everyone's compensated according to why here's how our product ties those things together. And I remember, Gil rally, who's also was a guest on one of the shows, I mean, literally, it was her and me and then Bobby, because Bobby was kind of helping us out of the side, Bobby, like, literally, we stood up in high dive across the table whenever we realized this black swan moment. Because it changes the dynamic of the negotiation and the conversation. So like, that's, you know, that's what I bring, what I think about to make these things real, is you have to start there. And then you know, goes through to the relationships. And there's, you know, there's, there's so many, there's so many tactical things that you can do to make a partnership work, but I think you have to start there, right? Let's take it let's take a different turn, and move into not just how you get the mindshare of, you know, the individual contributors and build peer relationships, but you start to branch out into other parts of the organization. So, marketing product, maybe talk to me a little bit about how you've seen going into, you know, other areas of the business outside of the partner, Oregon, the sales org.

Justin Bartels  24:09
Yeah, I mean, at first just being a, you know, partner, you know, individual one or, you know, tech alliances manager, team one, I think it you know, my first step was understanding, you know, both with our internal marketing groups and our partners, marketing groups, where do the needs align, where we can, you know, exchange something with a partnership or to help each other out with the partnership and same thing on the product side and integrations, like is there you know, is there a product need that we our team does want to build or you know, is later on in the roadmap that we're, you know, partner integration would suffice and is heavily requested right now, to put together a bigger picture. And I think you know, early on I just taking stock of that and playing liaison and being able to connect those leaders who own that problem, find that problem and own that problem and care about that problem across both organizations. It's probably your best bet before you get you know, backup for with a partner marketer and backup with a you know, Dev integrations team and Iran really run with that

Jared Fuller  25:02
policy there, I'm gonna pause you there, because maybe we'll talk about this, you know, tech Alliance to like partner marketing component. What you just said was, you have to find the unique things like from the field from, and then bring those to partner marketing not ask partner marketing, what we can do together? Was that kind of the takeaway?

Justin Bartels  25:22
Yeah, yep. Yep. So. So I think and I think that's also a good barometer of like, is this a really big important partnership? Like, can it can it do something for marketing, at the same time, it does something for sales at the same time it does for for product and customer success, because if you can hit on, you know, one of the major initiatives with all four of those organizations or throughout the entire customer lifecycle, that that really has, you know, I would say is the checkboxes you should run with when when evaluating a new partnership, right, like, and being honest about, hey, am I trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with this partnership? And it sounds great on paper, but really, there's not, you know, there's not something that a partnership, you know, can solve for on both sides. Right,

Jared Fuller  26:06
right. Let's talk about, you know, getting an audience because, you know, the one to one work, you know, there's lots of work that goes into making that one to one work where you, you know, on a zoom call with, you know, one person you're trying to get, you know, her account list and right connection to your account executives, eventually. But let's talk about getting an audience because that's, you know, kind of like the holy grail of like getting more, you know, awareness into consideration, right. Like, if they've heard of you before, and they've seen you on a screen, or like at one of their field events, then whenever you have that asked down the line and you try to connect one on one, it's more likely to land, I'd love to hear a little bit how you think about getting those one on one events or making sure they have an impact. I mean, this might be where theatre testing comes into play, on how you, you know, present to a large group, and then are able to go reach out to them one to one, and they actually respond to your emails, they actually book a phone call, I feel like a lot of people can just spin their wheels just trying to do that. Right,

Justin Bartels  27:10
right. And I think this one thing that's going to tie all this together is really the importance of having like an internal champion at your partner organization that helps you explain help explain the insider baseball, what each organization and group is going to need. And, you know, when you're in a partnership, that's usually your, your corresponding Partner Manager. But before you've established that partnership, I think it's worth doing some development and some cold outreach to find a champion that helps understand these different parts of the organization can explain them to, so that when you when you are presented with an opportunity to present in front of a larger organization, they can put you in touch with maybe somebody at that organization, that's, that's, or at that part of the organization that's really well respected. So, you know, what I often do is, if I'm about to go in front of a group of csms, in a specific vertical, or in a specific, you know, product line within Adobe, I'll have my partner manager set me up with 30 minutes just to basically the almost like persona research of like, What keeps you up at night? Like, you know, what's your primary goal? If I don't know and, you know, what do you calm down? But also like, what are you seeing these challenges with your group, with your customers, and here's my value hypothesis, and getting that feedback first, before you present it to the larger group is key. And especially when you can say, Hey, you know, we worked with, you know, Jessica, as an example. And she's really well respected within this group to come up with this message and come up with the storyline and keep it focused on what matters to you. So let me know what you think about this 20 minute overview, you know, but I think one, building a champion who can give you the insider baseball before you go to that bigger group, and almost give you the feedback on the story of the why is this gonna resonate? before you get there has been kind of my bread and butter.

Jared Fuller  28:47
Yeah, and then getting that, you know, feedback loop prior to presenting to the larger organization. I think, a lot of folks, it's such a simple thing to do, but it's probably overlooked by a bunch of people. It's like, oh, let's go prep internally, let's prep internally, versus prepping with the partner and getting feedback before you go to that large audience. Because you don't get those opportunities, like every month, probably not even every quarter, right? Like you might have one shot at sales kickoff, and they just learned you know, 80 things and you want them to remember your 81 and so you better make sure that you you know are seeking some feedback prior to going in and you know, getting that lot out large audience. Yeah, posts and then to add Go ahead.

Justin Bartels  29:28
I was gonna say to add to that, like if we talk about the flip of that of like, how do you get that big audience right, like how do you even these team calls, they have so much to cover, you know, and they have so much to go get in, you know, in their bi weekly as their their monthly How do you earn 1015, even 20 minutes so that I think the play at least that we've run with is get Get, get a win with that team and then bubble it up to the manager, right? Whether it's the first deal or helping them grow an account or, you know, making them look like a hero within their organization. And as soon as that win comeback You know, comes back, like my, my go to action there is like, Hey, who's your manager, I'd love to thank him for the partner collaboration that we just had. And that's your bridge into, you know, a higher part of the organization where you can make the case of saying like, Hey, we did this deal with Jessica, she looked like a hero, the customers happy, we partnered really well on it, I want to run this play again. And you know, she's been fantastic. Do you think it's worth the 15 minutes to talk about this with the rest of your team, so we can replicate this across? And does that resonate with the initiatives you have, and you know, you can kind of conduct your discovery there. But that's a play that has worked really well and bubbling up these enablement sessions, when maybe your partner organization isn't developed developing them for you.

Jared Fuller  30:40
Right, so it's like the bubble up and circle back kind of play where you're going one layer up, and you're bubbling up, you know, the when the insight The thing that really helped one of their individual contributors or their team, and then you circle back with updates to that leader, right, and they see you in these, you know, broader team events. And whenever you have an opportunity, you're able to, you know, speak contextually to, like, you know, you know, the commercial green field, like health care, you know, like, it's specific, right, like how you've helped, they're part of the organization, not just the big dog, because every single you know, business unit, or even segment, cares about different parts of the business. So it might be vertical specific, it might be geo specific, it might be very different, depending on what side of the business that you're talking to, you have to, you know, have that opportunity to kind of like bubble up and then circle back and provide them the updates. Let's go like post, post those events, where you're, you know, you've just given a big presentation, talk to me about CTAs. And trying to get that, you know, you just present it to 60 people. How does that 60 people translate into, you know, six account mapping calls? Right.

Justin Bartels  31:51
Yeah. Very clear. CTA. Right. And I think it's, it's, it's actually starts to the presentation and walking people through the importance of that CTA, right. So typically, if you're doing your first enablement session with a new group, the ideal state is you get to an account mapping call where you can really understand Okay, what relationships does this group have, if your partner organization isn't willing to give it to you or do it mass? And then you know, where can i map my teams and set them off to start working on these accounts together and helping each other out. And I think, in the presentation, you know, the Y has the land, the value property, the value hypothesis as the land as to why this is going to be a better together story. And then literally walking them through how easy that process is going to be. And starting with the CTA. So like saying, like, here's how we got the deal with Jessica, right? We started with this account mapping, where we're going to do xy and z, and I'll do all the prep upfront, all you have to do is, you know, make it easy for you just send me your list and you know, with these details, and then from there, I'll mark it up before our call to make it as effective and efficient for you. And on that call, we're gonna set two to three targets, where it makes sense for you based on your relationship and your initiatives. And, you know, accounts that we're trying to target and we think would be a really good fit for what we're doing over here. And I think having that transparency in that, you know, giving them the power to say like, Look, obviously, out of all these relationships, not all of them are going to be great, and I don't want to try and boil the ocean, I don't want to try and be very invasive here. Let's really pick our 8020 where what are the accounts that are really going to matter with us? And then, you know, what's the plan from there? So at CTA, you know, if it's new, if you haven't done that account mapping, typically, it's the account admin coming out of the team, then and we'll call, you can do it in mass to appeal to the manager and say, like, hey, management level, its management up here, and I'll put you in touch with maybe my sales director that overlaps with that territory, and you can run with this motion between your reps. That's, that's where you, that's where you don't have to do as much work and, you know, you can credit the results to the partnership. So that's, that's the ultimate scale. But sometimes that doesn't always work with territory's You know,

Jared Fuller  33:48
I think what you just said was really important, and every frontline alliances manager, or even channel manager needs to listen to this, because it's similar to a thought I've always had about sales is that so few people really focus on what happens after they sign. So like, if you're, if you're selling a deal, like what really happens after you sign like, yeah, you might sell an onboarding package, but like, manage my expectations. You're selling me some stuff. In this case, you know, an alliance opportunity, here's how we're gonna help your customers and we both win. So, assume you have a good story. How do we actually work together that's not summarized in one slide of like, email me at this email att.com. With your hottest leads, like no one's going to do that. But what you've just said was, what you do is you use an example of how you worked with Jessica at the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, and then what the success was, and that's managing my expectations, like, okay, here's how Justin worked with Jessica. Here's how I'm going to do it. So this is when he asked me to engage and start with a, I understand what B, C, D and E are as well. And that's, you know, it's like it's like that trust. It's like, you don't Come in for an elective procedure with a doctor, whenever you don't understand what happens like after, right, like what's happening the next you know, 3456 weeks, it's not like, okay, I show up to the doctor's office. And like, what what happens next, like you got to know what's going on. And that's where the trust comes into play. So I think that's an awesome way of framing those big opportunities with being in front of a larger audience, manage their expectations, and show them how you've worked with one of their counterparts throughout that process. Love it, love it. Yeah.

Justin Bartels  35:31
And I think if the group small enough, right is a little bit different, if it's 60 people, right, 60 people, you kinda got to do the, the follow up to everybody, if here's the takeaways, here's the content. Here's the clear CTA, I think the the, the simpler and shorter, you can make that follow up, the better, you know, classic email copywriting, the more potent you can be with that follow up off of an enablement session, the better. But if it's a smaller group, like and it's a, it's your crowd, and these are, you know, people you really, you know, want to develop relationships with, it's worth a one on one follow up and saying, Hey, you know, as opposed to having your partner manager, send out all the notes afterwards saying, like, Hey, can I do an individual route, you know, follow ups with all these, with all these people, and maybe using something like drift video to make it a little bit more personalized to really get their trust and put a face to the name because it's sometimes it's hard to know who was paying attention during that session, who was, you know, checked out, you know, handling a client fire, it's really hard to gauge in mass, you know, who all was, was there unless they weren't necessarily asking direct questions, and very, you know, obviously very engaged with the session. So the smaller group, sometimes it does make sense to even break it off into personalized follow ups and, and make it you know, a little more engaging.

Jared Fuller  36:41
Let's talk about the day to day, the day in the life versus the week in the life. You know, it's Monday, and then it's Tuesday, and then it's Wednesday. And these opportunities, there's a lot of time in between these opportunities. If, let's assume, you know, Ryan just joined the call on partner up and he's like, hey, Justin, what would be your one tactical tip for me like on a daily basis, like what should I do, as an Alliance's manager, like, what should be my one thing that I do every day, no matter what,

Justin Bartels  37:09
for sure, there's, I'll go through my flow a progression. And that's number one, starting with all my opportunities that are in flight that partners are involved with. So having a very clean tagging structure and management structures is gonna be massively important, especially if you're dealing with a lot of opportunities, maybe you have a smaller ASP, and you're working across a lot of account teams that management has to be really dialed in your organization has to be real dialed or you're going to, you're going to lose out on a lot of, you know, potential partner, we've

Jared Fuller  37:38
screwed that up. Like we've we've also screwed that up. Like we've like, changed process, unlike reporting structures, like full transparency, you screwed this up. But you can, you can actually do it really hacky, like startup, like, use things at your disposal, like, you know, tasks, or events, activities, and even just, you know, if you don't have the full, you know, power or control of your sales ops function, you can even what you started by putting stuff in the title of the act for sure,

Justin Bartels  38:04
yeah, you could do it an Excel spreadsheet, right of like, name of the opportunity, and the next step date. And the note, and that's my simple structure is, what's the opportunity? What's the next step date? When should I take action on that opportunity based off the previous conversation or what's going on in the app, and then what's the next step, like and typing that out will save you a ton of time, like when it's fresh, when you when you just had that meeting, or that call, or that email, and you know, what you're supposed to do next two weeks from now, putting that directly in the note or wherever you're keeping track of it. And Salesforce and Excel spreadsheet is crucial girls, you're going to be thinking back and saying like, what was the nature of this deal? What's their relationship with this account? And the more you can get the a the owner, the better if you're if you're just checking in on them and saying, Hey, are you did you do that thing that you promised to the partner and vice versa, that's, that's great if they can own that process. So that's, that's typically where I'll start is with the opportunities that are in flight, or the ones we're targeting right now are the accounts we're trying to target right now. And then from there, you know, each one of those accounts and those opportunities has a next step date, and it has a next step. And I'll start and I'll say, Hey, I got to take care of these 10 activities on these opportunities today. And I got to update the notes in that. And just that's just to make sure that I'm not all the upfront costs, and the partner, you know, in getting engaged in an opportunity to setting up the initial meeting, coming up with a plan. I've already done that work, it'd be it'd be stupid to let it miss, you know, mismanaged down the pipe and, you know, have that that partner influence that partner support not not actually come to fruition. I think it's also important to pair that with just kind of a bucket list and work with your sales leadership on this of like, one of the 10 things partners can do throughout the entire opportunity cycle, to progress on opportunity. So if you don't have any relationship, you know, first step, can they make an interaction or can we do a joint session together or some event together to get them into conversations early on the opportunity? Can we understand a little bit more account? Can we have an account sync with that partner to really understand the initiative That they have going on what they're doing with their partner, you know who their players and map out that account, Id stage and the opportunity can we get them to endorse and differentiate us from the comp competitive solutions are also evaluating? And then towards the end of the deal, can they, you know, help us navigate the buying cycle and procurement like have they just been through a buying cycle and they know that they can see around corners and have us help us accurately navigate legal procurement security, that's a play, we can run there. So I think it's worth having that placard of the 10 plays or the 10 ways the partner can help throughout the entire lifecycle of the opportunity as well as the customer. So that when you're running through that list of your opportunities and your accounts breaking into or you're working on today, you can say, Ah, this opportunities mid stage. You know, I know that, you know, the prospect has been a little cagey with their discovery, or, you know, with what we know about what's going on, can we lean in the partner for a little bit more insight into their initiatives, what the what they're going through, who are the players are in that count, and that's the play today.

Jared Fuller  40:56
And I've seen that work. What's really amazing is I've seen reps who are normally skeptical of partners. Here's the funny thing. Every organization is going to prioritize you know sourced pipeline versus, you know, what we might call influence pipeline, which is, you know, an opportunity already existed, right? I think, to some degree, we understand, you know, between you and me in the larger org, we understand that influence has value, because we see when rates, you know, be more than double, right, what they normally are, but reps Normally, if they have an open opportunity, right, so I already have an op, you rarely see reps, engage partner orgs, right, whether it be on the service or the tech side, because it's like, I don't want another party screwing up my already complicated deal. But I've seen reps that really were anti partner come around to leverage, you know, our tech partnerships, even mid to late stage because they're like, Look, I have some blind spots around procurement that are really starting to scare me. Right? Like, my coach, my champion is not really like being forthcoming. Maybe it's because they have a bad relationship with procurement. Right? diet, these dynamics. You know, Todd talks about it like our CRM, he says, like, Look, what you want to try and do is have the answers to the test before you take the test. So there's various stages of the sales process where it's kind of another test, like if you show up to procurement, and you don't know what that process is, like, you might get slapped in the face. Like it can be rough. I mean, I've done procurement with like, I don't know, fortune 500 telecom companies. And that's about as bad as it gets, right, like, right Telecom, you know, legal, like all of that stuff. And I wasted a ton of time, and I'd screwed up a bunch of stuff almost lost a big deal. Last one, for sure. And probably a relationship with a champion who will never work with me again, because I couldn't navigate procurement, it was way too complex. And I had a 20 year procurement professional that was like there to, you know, rake me through the coals and make me look horrible. Like that was her job. She was like, Oh, honey, you don't know what you're doing. I'm about to take her out. So I've seen reps that, you know, go, you know what, I'm gonna lean into getting the answers to the test and work with Justin to, you know, really nail procurement, wow, the organization and land my deal at the size, I want to land it, not push it out another quarter, there's so many things that you can do. So I think that placard of here's how we can work together no matter where the OP is, no matter where the account is, is just is stellar. And you got to educate the ABS and the directors and you know, kind of out throughout the work. Right? And we're gonna let you finish No, no, that's the I think, there's, there's like 1000s of tactical things that we could talk to Justin about. Now, I'm actually super excited to unpack some of these, I think the cool thing about having, you know, co hosts is that you get different perspectives on the people that you're talking to, you get different types of questions, but then there's always, you know, there's always those things that you can bring out of your experience and in, you know, inject into a conversation with someone that might be you know, at a different stage of their career or a different level of their career, where we can tie like ideas and like the big stuff down to here's how you actually get it done. And I think this is gonna be a blast Justin to do that with you. And tomorrow, we're actually recording another one. So we're going to do back to back episodes. There we go. And we're going to talk to a gentleman by the name of David pilgrim who I'm really excited to talk to he's a he's been in tech partnerships BD big BD deals for 20 years. And Justin, you're going to be able to take him out of the clouds and turn it into actual tangible real advice ground is that keep him grounded, keep this crazy,

Justin Bartels  44:49
everyday Alliance manager. Not just that will be my my most important question. I think we'll see. But I'm excited to learn right. There's no degree for this. There's no you know, there's hardly degree programs for sales and you know, progressive organizations are doing or, you know, universities they're doing it, colleges are doing it, but they definitely is a degree for BD. And everyone kind of learns by doing and learns by getting coached and learns by asking questions from others and saying, This is broken. How did you fix it? or How did you do it? So I'm excited to learn from this community. Absolutely, absolutely.

Jared Fuller  45:21
So, before we wrap up, just a quick reminder that we're now in partnership with the cloud software Association, so make sure you go check them out. Google cloud software Association, join the slack group, there is amazing events, incredible content. We've had guests on here from the CSA, we will continue to have guests on here from the CSA and not tomorrow's but we're going to be announcing in the next week or so depending on how schedules are that this is actually going to be a live show. So partnerships going to a live format, where members of the cloud software Association will be able to watch it live. Jess and I are going to do like 30 to 45 minutes depending on the vibe and you know how we're how we're doing, you know of the standard podcast format. And then members will be able to actually do q&a with the with the guests live through our platform that we have set up so I'm really excited for that. Don't worry if you can't catch it live obviously, we're still doing YouTube, Spotify, apple, Amazon, I had Alexa play an episode for me the other day, so you can even ask Alexa to play the podcast and apparently it works. It's all magic to me. I have no idea how the heck she knows. But I'm stoked to have Mr. Justin Martel's. We're gonna go on a long run together. And 2021 is going to be the year that we put, you know, partnerships on the map with partner up. So Justin, welcome aboard. any parting thoughts on your first episode?

Justin Bartels  46:46
I'm excited to jump in man. It's a Monday, Monday night after the holiday and it says me riled up to jump in tomorrow morning. So

Jared Fuller  46:53
I, you know, get to work. That's something that we could all use a little bit more of, I think in 2021 is gratitude is a very underappreciated, ironically underappreciated. virtue, that. You know, my background is I have everyone fights ego to some degree, whether you feel like you're faking it, or you feel like you deserve more than you have. I've always had this itch to start my next company, I've started several, I haven't had the big exit, but I've, I've started businesses, and I've built multi million dollar companies, failed multi million dollar companies. And I've always had this like, Ah, you know, am I Nbd? Am I a partnerships professional, one thing that I can tell you is that by not feeling alone, and like, participating in this podcast, and hearing from you, and like in the CSA, and actually seeing the conversation of like, all of these people that are doing this profession has been incredibly humbling, and has made me love this profession. And there's, I think one of the things I'm doing right now is, you can't see it, but I'm doing this. From Jesse Itzler, it's like the big ass calendar club, where I have this giant calendar, and it's like, my entire year's planned out about, you know, all the things I want to accomplish this year, you know, podcasts being one of them. Um, and like, when do I want to start my next venture? What I want to do next in three years, five years. One thing that's very important for everyone to remember, no matter what you do next is Justin, have you heard of that concept of like a T shaped marketer or a T shaped entrepreneur?

Justin Bartels  48:35
Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Jared Fuller  48:38
Like that, why, for me became very, very clear. Whenever I became in this podcast where it's like, you know, sales, marketing, customer success product, you know, fundraising, there's all these things across the top vector. But you better have you know, a tee a couple things where you have really deep experience. And for me to lean in to partnerships, because it does touch everything, right? It is so cross functional, and it is rare to get excellent at this has been very empowering. And I'm really grateful this year to be in partnerships. and grateful to have this podcast and to work with folks like Justin. So maybe that's the note that we'll end it on is a sweet note for 2021. That's me going over a month in a beautiful, a beautiful role, where we get to experience so many different things that can really translate to anything in the world. Justin, all right. We'll see you folks next time.

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