What is up PartnerUp!?
A few weeks ago we covered the ~75,000 Account Executive jobs listings on LinkedIn being surpassed by a surprising new leader…the Partnerships Manager job listing.
There were ~81,000 Partnerships Manager jobs. Perhaps a turning point in partnership's popularity.
If that’s the case, then it’s on us leading this movement to answer the question – where the heck are these partner people going to come from?!
Most likely, sales.
So instead of pontificating in our ivory towers on what will motivate sellers to come to partner land, we figured we’d bring on one of the best who HAS made the transition absent any of our influence!
Chelsea Graham is a former Account Executive for Tableau turned Partnerships Manager for Highspot.
She spoke at Supernode 2022 and after her story of taking the partner pill, we dive deep into the opportunity to create partner experiences for sellers that flip creative switches and sow the seeds of tens of thousands of partner professionals for the future.
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Full Transcript:
Jared Fuller 0:00
Hey what is up partner up? We're back. Got Isaac in the chair and a friend a supernodes that I met at Supernote. Mrs. Chelsea Graham Chelsea, welcome to partner up. Thank you so much for having me, Jared. Yeah, when we were chatting at dinner, sounded like I said something that triggered triggered the invite, so I'm glad to be here. Well, it's totally you're a defector. It's the defector.
Chelsea Graham 0:38
The defector episode? Yes, that should be the title. I am a defector, I guess. But not really. Because I was still I'm still working with all my buds in sales. So kind of just the new bridge.
Jared Fuller 1:44
Yeah, so Chelsea, what what led to that decision? Was it because it I feel like it's different for everyone, but it seems like you might be leading a new wave, not like it before the anecdote, maybe the framing is this before it was this is where salespeople go that are failed.
Chelsea Graham 2:22
Yeah, I definitely didn't get any sympathy cards more like congratulations. Um, but yeah, it was this move that.
Isaac Morehouse 15:24
To what degree Chelsea? Because that's one of the exciting, interesting and challenging things about the way that partnerships have changed with some of these SAS tech partnerships is that they impact more than just the sales process. They also are impact the customer success team, for example, if you're working with integrations and things like that, to what extent are you are you working entirely with sales internally? Or are you also working with other departments with customer success or product or marketing? With, you know, trying to help them coordinate with with partners? I'm really curious to see that because it's been there's it's very, it's kind of like becoming well established this motion of partner sales. And then there's this kind of like, like, little pockets of partner, how do we do that with our marketing team? How do we do that with CES? I'm curious where you're at with that.
Jared Fuller 0:54
I like that. I like that framing. What's so interesting is last week, we kind of had a heart filled episode. So if y'all missed Mario to Robbia, we were talking with him about kind of like, really the heart behind all of this and how partnerships feels a little bit more authentic, a little bit more human etc. And I imagine that some of those heartfelt things that we were kind of talking about leads, in some ways to this conversation, and otherwise it doesn't Chelsea, it's your story that I was most interested in. So for kind of context and background, Chelsea and I met at supernode. So crossbeams annual conference, and we were at the speaker's dinner because she was speaking there. And I kind of hear a little bit of your story about transitioning from the direct side to the partner side. You know, Isaac, you might call this being partner pilled.
Isaac Morehouse 1:37
That's right. Taking taking the partner pill, there's no looking back.
Jared Fuller 2:00
That was the general census, right, like BD people, partnerships, people has failed salespeople. But I don't think that's, that's not you. And that's
Isaac Morehouse 2:08
like when you tell people that you moved into partnerships, they were sending you like, condolence, you know, cards and things like that, like sympathy cards. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. But something's different.
Chelsea Graham 2:33
I don't know if if, today, I would have made the decision for the same reasons, but definitely happy that I made the decision. So at the time, so I was a sales rep, selling in new accounts, managing some existing accounts as well. And I was pretty successful with what I was doing, you know, hitting quotas, going to president's clubs, that kind of thing. But this opportunity came up to join the partner team, actually the VP at the time, who literally chased me down the hallway after he saw me talk at our partner bootcamp. So I was the sales rep educating on partners on how to work with the sales team. And he chased me down and put this opportunity on my plate. And I was like, you know, I hadn't really considered it, I need some time to think about this, make sure that this is the move that I want to do. And the more that I thought about it, I wasn't necessarily the partner, poster child of working with partners and all of my opportunities. But I, I knew about partners, and I knew what they could do for the business. So I was intrigued with that what I was most intrigued about was the potential leadership opportunity, I guess, kind of what you were talking about, of, of, you know, something doesn't quite feel right in as a direct seller. Like, it felt fine in terms of my level of success. But it was very much self focused on what could I accomplish with my territory and my quota. What I saw in the partner side was this bigger opportunity to not only just help myself, but help a lot of people on the sales team, help them see bigger and see beyond just their quota and see beyond just, you know, selling the next deal. And really impacting a customer from from a much broader perspective. So that's what kind of triggered the idea and I, you know, started down this journey. There. Yeah.
Jared Fuller 4:39
I want to pause there because I feel like this is where we get to do good sales stuff, right, like peeling the onion back, right is going one layer deeper. I'm gonna bet that that wasn't the reason I think that was an output of the reason. So like, when you're thinking about this, were you thinking about it like a business decision? This is Chelsea Graham, not Chelsea grant. Incorporated, right? Where you thinking about it like, Okay, what's going to change in my day to day life? Or were you thinking under about it in the context of the business? Like, for you versus the company, it's like, okay, I get to focus on my territory, my book, my etc. But what about, like, your day in the life like how you operate as a, as who you are?
Chelsea Graham 5:23
Yeah, for sure. I was thinking about it, you know, with my my few interactions that I did have with partners, how awesome it was, of being able to work with another company and other organization. I was thinking about, you know, getting to know members of the data community at the time and being having more of an impact that way, versus just one particular deal at a customer. I was thinking about, you know, the leadership opportunity, really, among the sales team of helping the sales team in general, step up their game with
Jared Fuller 6:07
you felt like, This is Isaac, you're much more quotable than I am in terms of remembering who said, What, but if you want to go faster, go it alone, if you want to go farther go together.
Chelsea Graham 6:17
Have you heard that phrase before? Yeah, for sure.
Isaac Morehouse 6:20
We'll just attribute it. We'll just attribute it to you, Jared.
Chelsea Graham 6:26
To Michael Scott.
Isaac Morehouse 6:27
Yes. So Michael Scott. Yes. Yes, I
Jared Fuller 6:29
want people to fear how much they love me you can hang. Hang that outside my office door that famous Michael Scott quote. I think that has something to do with it. Like there's, there's this feeling of like, okay, I'm looking out for myself, versus I'm looking out for something bigger, right. And there's something that's more exciting about that, which is really odd. Like, when you when you zoom out and you go, I can care about myself, it's almost freeing. It's like, hey, I can control my controllables This is about me. And then all of a sudden, you see, well, I could contribute to something bigger. And then like, it's almost like it's a different evaluation, you're not thinking about the same things, you're carrying it the very core, you're caring about something fundamentally different.
Chelsea Graham 7:09
Totally, totally. And, and there's freedom in that too. There's like, you know, when you're just a salesperson, you're so tied to your number and your soul, like so, laser focused on that. A lot of stress can come from that. And while I had a much bigger scope, and much bigger responsibility, there's, there's so many more, there's so much bigger community that I'm working with that. That stress almost was like relieved a little bit. Like I can still control what I can control. But I'm working on a mission with more people than just myself and my SP or, you know, my, my sales team support. Its other companies each other.
Jared Fuller 7:53
Like, it's contrast for a second, could you build on like, this may be an after thought versus what you're thinking then? Can you build on stuff in the partner world versus in the sales world, it was like it was only the same things, there was no place to get leverage, right? There was no place to be like, Okay, if I go and do these three things for two, three months,
Isaac Morehouse 8:12
that's the word verse. That's the word Jared leverage. It's funny. Okay, so this is gonna it's gonna be nerdy econ talk to most people's ears. That's why I do this to my wife. Sometimes I'll use like economic language. And she'll be like, would you just talk to me like a human? I'm like I am, this is how I talk. But the concept of the structure of production, right? You have, you have the end, consumable, good. And then you have these these layers that are more roundabout, right, like, each layer gets more and more roundabout. So you have goods that produce goods, and then you have goods that produce the goods that produce the goods, right, and you capital goods that are higher up. And there's something about when you have that realization of the leverage involved. That's always been really exciting to me, like how do I get behind the thing behind the thing behind the thing? So the old you know, give a man a fish or teach man of fish? I'm always thinking like, okay, give a man a fish, fine. Teach man a fish better? What if? What if I could like, raise the capital to build the factories to make the rope to make the nets that helped people catch millions of fish, right? And there's something in that leverage where you're like, okay, the salespeople are going out there and catching the fish. But can you get involved in the net production process that's like one layer more removed from the market, which some ways you can get lost and lose your connection to the end consumer if you're not careful. But the leverage is so exciting, and you have so much more like lead time and you're just dealing with a different a whole different world that that connects to so many other parts, you know, downstream.
Chelsea Graham 9:47
Yeah, I like where you're going with that. Like, I haven't wanted necessarily to get into a partnership role. That's like so zoomed out that like you were saying you kind of get disconnected. Like, whatever Love about my role and kind of as I joined, the partner system is staying really connected to the sales team and building systems that impact more of them. So instead of just one person catching the customer using their tools that they have, building a solution or building an offering with a partner that will help 10 salespeople land a deal. And so I'm still really connected, and I get to hear like customer needs and concerns every single day, and then putting together bigger solutions in place that will address those. And that's, that's really exciting and really fun.
Jared Fuller 10:40
It's like an interesting realization, where, which gave me my thesis that I think the next wave of entrepreneurs are partner people. And I've seen, I've seen a lot of that actually, even since I think I had that in my first predictions episode seven, eight months ago, where there's dozens of companies that have been founded by ex partner execs that I'm aware of in the past, and that timeframe, because that mindset shifts from I'm a winner, like, I can win deals, and I can help customers to wait, how do I apply this more universally? Like, it's just like, once you start to go down that rabbit hole, you realize, Okay, wow. And the thing that seemed to be missing was community, you know, almost a movement, right? Like, when you're going through that by yourself? Can you imagine if there wasn't things like all this stuff that's popped up in the partnerships community in the past, you know, your, your couple years, like going through that, without that versus with it? How helpful has community, you know, the movement, you know, the partnerships moment, as I've called it, been in your like, realization of like, okay, this is the right spot for me.
Chelsea Graham 11:45
You know, to be honest with you at the crossbeam conference was like the most real and tangible and big feeling of like this, this is where I should be like, and I had been in partners for several years since 2018. And at the crossbeam conference, I'm like, Whoa, there's a lot of us now, like we're doing stuff, or we're building stuff. But I'm getting to talk with with other people in my role, or what I'm working on what I'm working on, was so cool to see and understand that. I'm not alone. This isn't just me trying to figure out something crazy, like we're all working on this together. So that was one of those moments for sure of just like this is, this is the right place for me. And that just happened in MIT. I've been doing partnership stuff for a while.
Jared Fuller 12:49
So what do you think then? Is the task at hand? You know, if this is, I reported on this the other day, I can't remember who I can give credit to Isaac, correct me if that name pops up. But I saw someone say something about the number of account executive jobs on like, Oh, I saw that. Yeah. And then. And then the number of partnerships, manager jobs. And I believe that account executive was 76,000 ish at the time of publishing, and then partnerships manager, that word exactly, was 80,000. And I was like, what, what did that just happen? That's a thing. And that doesn't include you know, it's like, you know, partners, Partner Manager versus partnerships or a versus account executive, but generally, they seem pretty, you know, those are pretty universal account, executive account executive has been around longer than partner ships manager. So there there is a new wave of people coming in. Why? Because there is not 80,000 partnerships managers that have done the job before, right. There are certainly 80,000 Plus account executives, but there are 80,000, partnerships, managers, meaning we got to pull from CES, we got to pull from sales, we have to inculcate the next generation of partner pros. What do you think is missing in this movement that like, so you stepped into supernode? And you're like, Okay, I feel at home, going back to 2018. What do you think is like, I don't know, for the people that are listening to this podcast, we're the crazies. So what do we need to be doing? Teach us on how we can bring more people like Chelsea to the table? Well, did you at the same time?
Chelsea Graham 14:17
Yeah, I think the transition actually from, you know, moving in my roles at Tableau to moving in height to high spot and more like tech partnerships, has been really eye opening that I wasn't super aware of, like partnerships. Now, when people say that word, I think of something much different than what I thought of before. So what I used to what I used to think of is like people working with, you know, software vendors like that sell a bunch of other stuff. That's I think what some people still think of when they think of partnerships like that it's this old school, reseller or versus SAS tech partnerships, which is really fun and exciting and challenging and all of the good stuff. I think more education of like, what do you in partnerships is to like the sales team? And what is possible there? I don't know if everybody's even aware of it.
Yeah, I'm mostly centered around the sales team, in terms of, you know, finding originated and influenced revenue with our partners. But a lot of that is the give motion, you know, you can't start a flywheel until you you give. And so that's working with our account managers to help them understand, you know, what retention can look like? And we're still digging into a lot of that data of, you know, customers using integrations and what their success rate looks like, using our partners. And, you know, how many integrations does it take to make our product really sticky? That kind of thing, I think that will only increase the motion that we've developed. So working with them, for sure, working with our enablement team for both internal and external with our partners, as well as our our team members internally to understand, you know, why we partner how we partner what the joint value prop is all of that for each one of our partners, working with marketing to to help give us the right collateral to attract new buyers, because of these partnerships. That's a little bit on the lighter side. I'm mostly focused on the revenue piece of it.
Jared Fuller 17:50
I want to unpack a little bit what you said about it's kind of bothering me,
Isaac Morehouse 17:58
oh, what? We should have a segment tell them why you're mad. Tell them why you're mad Jared, or tell what's what's bothering you.
Jared Fuller 18:09
So your, your experience of coming from Tableau to high spot, and having a different perception of what partnerships meant then, versus what it meant. And what you see now, I feel like one of the biggest problems that we have as an industry is that we lack empathy for where people are and what they think we do. Like. And that's such a hard thing for me to say, because it's like, wait, no one understands partnerships. No one cares, right? Like, that's how the way it can kind of feel like we're getting some more Limelight now, given the momentum. But that's the way that it could feel coming into this. And if it's like you've you invert that problem, and you put the empathy the other way around. Wait, what point of view does the other person have on partnerships? Where are they coming from? And you can imagine, as a seller, if we if we need to bring 80,000 People over from sales to partnerships, right, to help these companies grow the next phase of business. We got to get really good at this. We got to get like really good. And instead of starting where we are, we probably need to start where they are. Right so like starting the conversation with one of the things that's been bothering me is when people say partnerships, I keep on wanting to say partner, what partner what I'm talking about partner marketing, partner sales, partner success, bike, integrations, co marketing, resell alliances. I mean, we can talk about the entire business. And if we're talking to an account executive want to make sure that it's very clear. Okay, we're talking about partner sales. Wait, what's different than sales? What's different than partnerships with partner sales is a very specific thing. What do we mean by that? Right? It's like okay, this is where we create leverage with 10 partners 1520 And it really establish trusted relationship. where we have more, because we can, you know, go faster alone go farther together. We're actually building a network, or a little mini network of trusted accounts and people where we get to go out and win in the market together. And it's like, Well, wait, what does that look like? I feel like that's been the missing piece that you just illuminated for me in a lot of ways is that I keep on asking people partner, what, because when we're talking to each other partnerships, it's fine. We get it, it means lots of things. When you're talking to someone in the other chair, it feels like it lacks a lot of empathy to start with our assumptions versus theirs.
Chelsea Graham 20:32
Yeah, when I actually this morning, on boarded her not onboarded, but introduced what I do to three new AES. And yeah, I always start, you know, what's their context for partnerships in the past? Like, how have they worked with partnerships, but I also show a slide of our entire team of like, all the different departments, because what I think what they think, is so narrow, that I want them to see that there's this bigger world that there's, you know, had high thought 12 people working on partnerships in all different types of capacities, plus the integration on the product team, plus the marketing team and some extra folks outside without even, but I want them to see the scope that, you know, I think a lot of perception is what do those partner people do over there? I don't necessarily see it in my book of business or on my deals, like what are they even doing? So I try to paint that picture for them that there's there's a lot of things in motion here. And that, you know, obviously creates empathy for, for us and for me, but it also helps orient them and helps them see past themselves a little bit too.
Jared Fuller 21:48
I'd like to take it to maybe pivot one direction, Chelsea, what's like, what's your favorite story? Coming from a seller to a partnerships and maybe an aha moment that you would we do a bad job? I think articulating the stories, too, is like we have these like philosophical and esoteric and economical debates about partnerships a lot, which I think are very important because again, it's about getting leverage at the same time. You know, maybe I'll share one with me. You know, everything started to change for me whenever we could get our most least trusting rep. Like the one that hated partners the most to speak at QPR about how they were working with partners. So for me as a partner leader, that was like, okay, that started to change the effect, you know, the, the behavior of reps, way more than my 40 470, Slack, DMS. And
Isaac Morehouse 22:37
how did you how did you go about that journey? How did you go about that? Like, did you deliberately say, Okay, here's the here's the crusty person who's you know, cranky about this partner thing?
Jared Fuller 22:46
Oh, no, I gave everyone on the partner team, the target, like, we have to turn this person into our number one fan. It was like the loudest, most hating, like, I was like, we're making this person a fan. So that for me, it was a big aha moment. Because then I could just instead of giving my horse pitch and spiel and like, why you need to work with partners, I'd be like, go talk to this person, you know that he hated us more than anyone. Go go? Why is he everyone on the board? Quarter? And this year? He said it himself, not me. And then that social proof took care of everything I Okay, what do I need to know? You know, what are some of those anecdotes or stories that you feel like have been like aha moments for you? And, you know,
Chelsea Graham 23:27
hi, spotter? Yeah, I I guess aha moment? In what way? There's, there's a lot of different ways to take that aha moment in flipping the
Jared Fuller 23:38
story components like removing, removing the tactical, like, here's the impact on the business, but like experiencing from the other side, like, wow, that's where leverages, if someone would have told me that if I'd heard that story, whenever I was on the direct team, that's how we can kind of go in narrowing that delta on these 80,000 jobs. Yeah,
Chelsea Graham 23:56
I think what you're saying there of raising awareness on the sales team, we take the same approach where we try to win over the the top cells, the people who are the most against it, or the or the most lone wolf about it, and, you know, really target them to help them and make sure that they're successful. We've done that. And I think one of the best things we did was have an sales kickoff session where we had account managers and account executives like both sides of the house talking about how they're working with partners. That was huge. We've done that, both places at Tableau. One of the best programs that I ran was called was for the SMB team. And we purposely targeted the SMB team, because those are our future enterprise sellers. And we wanted them to understand and know and believe in partners at the beginning of their career journey. And so we developed a program called SM best i I like SMB, SMB best. And we had a monthly like little cohorts. So one member of every SMB team across the country would join us once a month to hear from a partner. They get to workshop about maybe running an opportunity or something like that. Dad's in the background doing something right now.
Isaac Morehouse 25:25
And those are that we love those moments, by the way. That's great. It's perfect
Chelsea Graham 25:28
timing.
Jared Fuller 25:30
We just got told that by the way, we just got told that one of the favorite episodes is when we had a kid interrupt the pod and it was,
Isaac Morehouse 25:37
yeah, we're leading in someone's like, Hey, I love the show. I remember this one episode, and I thought they were going to call out some brilliant thing that one of us had said, and I was getting ready to be flattered. He's like, my favorite part was when one of your guests had a child walking in the background, like, oh, okay, wow. Anything to stop here, you guys talking?
Chelsea Graham 25:58
Maybe she'll make an appearance. I think she's going after the dried mango right now. Yeah, like in the bag. So we started this program as in best little cohort. And what we created was these little partner champions, that, you know, they weren't the ones necessarily raising their hands for it. But we pitched it as like a leadership opportunity. You know, we had managers nominate people to be a part of this. And that was awesome. Because then they go back. And they one of the requirements was they come, they meet with a partner, they hear about something or hear about a specific topic. And then they went back to their teams, and they had to teach it back. So they got the leadership experience, and they got the glory about teaching their team about something new. But we set up this whole program motion, and that was really fun to see the light bulb moments go off like, gosh,
Isaac Morehouse 26:50
I love I love you said they, they get the glory. That's just like, like, make them famous, right, which is a principle for partners as well, right? Make it just giving someone the opportunity to to build social capital to take credit for something to look good, because you you equip them in some way. That's powerful.
Chelsea Graham 27:11
Yeah, exactly. And then they get to feel like the hero when they bring this new idea to the team. And one rep, you know, so many times this happened, they would tell me like, Oh, I didn't know we could do XYZ. And it's like, Guys, I've been telling you that for months, like the same thing. But once you like, get them to, like, tell it to somebody else, you know, what's that saying? You like, once you teach it back, you actually are learning. That was the lightbulb moment for me of like enabling those reps to go and be the ones to spread the message rather than me just like talking over and over.
Isaac Morehouse 27:51
Man, that's, that is such a great little tidbit right there of like, if you are experienced by, you know, people in sales, for example, as this other department who comes and tells them, this is how you should be doing things with your partners, versus pulling individuals out equipping them and say, Now you get to go and tell your salespeople you get to go Intel, right? Like, oh, that's just it's so small, but it's just it's just so like, what are we talking about all the time Jared, recognize the way things already are and try to work with them rather than against them. That's human nature. Humans don't like someone from another department coming in and saying I need you guys to do things my way. But they but they do like, Hey, here's something that helps you out and X, Y and Z. Now you get to go tell your team you get to come to them with this new bit of insight. That's just I love it. That's astor's, that was oh, yeah, that was my family. Watch me all the time.
Jared Fuller 29:00
It was so good. But I always thought that opening line from I can't say the Baldwin was blast, because Jamie, bobble classes. Jamie, out there we go. Adam. What did he say? Like scientists tend to have this problem too. Like scientists are very bad at persuading beings persuasive. Right. They're bad at like telling the story. And he would be his opening line was I rejected it and substitute my own. Right? Like that was his line. And I always remembered I was like, that's really smart. But no one is going to listen to that and then be like, Okay, now now I'm now I'm listening to you. And that's kind of what we do is like, Look, you don't get it salesperson, you know, get it. And it's like, we tell them, we tell them and then you use some more universal principles of like, Hey, let me expose them to a leadership opportunity, a cohort based experience where they're not going through it alone. You just tied together a bunch of really interesting insights. Like we've talked about cohort based experiences on this podcast, that that's a much better community and members Uh, you know, approach than, like, Hey, here's this, you know, black hole of community figure it out versus like, Hey, can I go in with a handful of people and being exposed to, hey, you can create more, there are some answers to this test is really brilliant. And like, I don't know, there's been that more human and empathetic for like, the first principle side of things always yields to me, I've seen better results than I reject your reality,
Isaac Morehouse 30:23
you know. So, I mean, I spent a lot of time in the kind of like education and training and whatever space and that the power, one of the huge powers of the cohort based approach to anything is not only that you're not in it alone, right, you're together, but that there's boundaries on it. So it's not a cohort. It's not everyone. It's limited. It's a small number of people. And it's also not all the time, there's some time bound element. And so if you compare that to, you know, what's the classic thing people make fun of venture capitalists for saying, yo, let me know how I can be helpful, right? If the partner team is like, we're here, we're just here all the time with information we can we can help you, like, come to us if you need us. There's there's no urgency, there's no I mean, Jared, you know, the principles of selling, right, you needed. So, hey, we're gonna put specific people through a specific sort of cohort based something that has some time element that has some, you tap into something there, that's so and then once that groundwork has been laid, then the sort of, we're always here, kind of matters, right? Like, it's like if you've ever tried to spin up a Slack group, and you're just like, here's a bunch of people with like, interests, we're all here all the time. It's like dead. It's like crickets, it's awkward. Whereas if you say, let's say you have some online course that has cohorts, and as soon as you're done, all the graduates go into a Slack group, or if you've been through like a 500 startups or a Y Combinator, right, you have your cohort, you go through the trenches together after that, now, the kind of, we're always here to help you actually help and people take advantage of, and they jumped through, because there was something there that was like concrete, so like, concretizing, that, you know, whittling it down to smaller numbers to doing something instead of just sort of being like an ever present, you know, here when we need you sort of, it's almost like making yourself somewhat scarce, in a way, you know, create some some urgency, I guess,
Chelsea Graham 32:22
and creating like a special experience versus just an enablement session for everyone, you know, like, they got to participate in something that was a little bit unique.
Jared Fuller 32:38
That experience matter, right? Like it. What's so funny to me is like, here's another realization of the same principle, Chelsea, is that whenever you do good partner marketing, the sum of the brands should not be the sum of the brands. What the hell's that? What does that mean? Well, if you do some good partner marketing, it should not be one plus one equals two. It's, it's something else, it's transformed, meaning, what you did is you said, Hey, this isn't our partner enablement session, like you had a little brand for this and best and like you kind of blended together multiple things to where they felt they were going through experience that was just for them. It wasn't about the partner team. It wasn't about the SMB team. It wasn't about this company thing it was about the sum of that. We're giving you so much more. And like that was that's like just such a good nugget of wisdom, like the part of people that win are going to be able to do a very good job of curating those micro experiences and tying those components together. Do we get to do we get to see the dog finally her
Chelsea Graham 33:35
name is Frankie. Frankie, can I get a cookie for you? Wow, the first time in her life. She's never been running into a cookie. Yeah.
Jared Fuller 33:46
Okay, she just saw her walk past me. And now she does.
Chelsea Graham 33:48
This is so funny. She's very food motivated. She'll eat anything. You open in front of her. And she usually comes running. Coming.
Jared Fuller 33:56
This is where I could get my YouTube plug Isaac, for the dozens of us that watch you actually you're Alex Komorowski episode was actually doing pretty well on YouTube right now. So you and him did something. There's Frankie.
Isaac Morehouse 34:12
You got my wheels all spinning on this? On this idea of?
Chelsea Graham 34:17
She is sheepadoodle an old English Sheepdog.
Jared Fuller 34:25
Wow. That's a cool dog. Get out of this dog. Right?
Chelsea Graham 34:30
That usually sleeps all day except for today.
Jared Fuller 34:34
That's the seat that week. That was exactly what I was just talking about. No one cares about your dog but as sheepadoodle Right. No one cares about your partner enablement session. SM best. See how I did that? I'm really struggling with the top jokes right
Isaac Morehouse 34:49
now. Your theoretical dog versus versus the CIPA doodle that's right in front of me in real life, you know concretize it Hey, I can't even remember where we work. Jared, what happened? When we went off the rails, we went,
Jared Fuller 35:05
we went off the rails. It's good. It's good. Happy Tuesday, everyone released a if you don't know, that's when we publish. Partner up is every single Tuesday. We're just hanging out Isaac, we were talking about how we make one plus one equal three. And that's invest kind of event there with Chelsea.
Isaac Morehouse 35:22
I'm kind of imagining it's funny, because I'll hear, you know, partner people with sort of the same refrain of, you know, like, nobody, people don't really take me seriously or, you know, take our department seriously rather, or, listen, I'm trying to, you know, the salespeople. And this just this little insight of like, I'm just imagining, you know, places I've worked before. If you get some email or some calendar invite, it's like, hey, there's a lunch and learn where you can come learn about whatever to help you do your job better. It's always like an ignore, right? Or well, it depends. Are they offering food, maybe I'll stop by, or if there's some kind of, you know, optional mash training or whatever. Or even if your manager says, I want you to go to this, versus the idea of something where it's like, how can I how can I handpick maybe like, in Gerrits case, maybe you find the salesperson who's the biggest skeptic, maybe you handpick a handful, a handful of people. And you personally invite them, hey, put together a cohort of six people, I'm inviting you to be a part of it. And we're going to do this thing. And here's like, being invited specifically, to something like I've been invited to conferences like colloquia that have like 12 people, like you were invited you and 11 other people to come and discuss this book. And you just feel so flattered. Like, there's just something subtle there about the way you might go about interacting with other departments. I don't know I this is nothing brilliant, but I'm just hearing you. It to me, it's like really hitting me. I'm like, Oh, that is brilliant. Like just that little, little story. Well,
Chelsea Graham 36:50
it's I was just gonna say it's why like, one on one conversation works so much better than like team meetings or anything. This was part of my talk in crossbeam supernode, the unglamorous piece of it is like, I've spent a lot of time in one on ones having the same conversation, but it gets so much more engagement. When I do that, when I message somebody one on one in Slack, instead of an entire channel, I get no engagement when I drop something in the account management channel. But when I ping an account manager, like, hey, I want to talk about your accounts with this specific partner, because it's going to help you do this. And it's going to do this for the partner. Like, they're like, sure, yeah, let's talk, let's do it. And, you know, you, it's harder to say no, when you're the only person asked versus like, a channel of 30 people or 60 people or whatever it is.
Jared Fuller 37:44
Right? It's like, I mean, you can come up with things so quickly, like, I can imagine, hey, instead of, hey, partner training that needs to happen in q4. It's like, hey, there's four modules that you need to watch in q4 on partner training, how the why. And then it's like, Hey, you're one of five AES that we're doing not alone November with theirs for like four weeks in a row, we're gonna meet for 30 minutes review this one strip club session, and at the end of it, we're going to do this. It's like, okay, I'm in not alone, November, meaning like, you're going to work partners and all your deals, and here's the benefits you're gonna get for it. And it's like, it seems bigger. It's like, okay, I'm a part of this experience now. Like, yeah, November, I'm not gonna get a look. I don't know, I just made that up. But it sounds better than partner training. Right partner
Chelsea Graham 38:30
on every op, I love that. Boom, there
Isaac Morehouse 38:33
we go. Well, this is like, you know, the, the fractal nature of reality, I suppose. Because at every level, the same principles apply, Jared, what do we always talk about with partner hacker that it's, you know, ideas and experiences, or you could say, narratives or stories, and experiences. And if you can create those, right, like, Narratives that Inspire ideas that captivate and, and then you can create experiences that are enticing right now, you could call those content and events, but it's not quite the same. It doesn't quite get because that's too procedure alized, we immediately put that in his box of like, great, check off the box. But you're like, No, what we're really doing is trying to create a story that's captivating and experiences that people want to enter into. That's not just that's not just what the marketing team does to reach to reach customers. That's not just what you do internally. That's what you have to do with your colleagues. Right? Like how can you how can you frame it and even what you said, the language that you use, even given it a fun, catchy name, like that stuff actually matters. It really matters and it shows a level of, you know, interest and adventure and engagement instead of just a checking of the boxes, you know,
Chelsea Graham 39:47
totally. I've totally done the checking of the boxes by the way, like we've all done the Lunch and Learn that didn't have any attendees but yeah, the more successful ones have been the the X perience Yeah, or the hand hand combat, and I know my boss would like would always ask me like, what's the more scalable thing, but I'm like, this is scalable, because they're going to remember this versus a training that they go to and forget or do email the whole time.
Jared Fuller 40:21
I've seen this work in the most unscalable way. It's like, if you care enough about your people, and you want to, like create some advocates or allies, you have to build those relationships. I mean, so like, some of the best partner work I've ever done has been like tours, I go meet people hand to hand, you know, face to face, or I haven't go knock off 25 account executives on this trip 25 customer success managers and I meet them all one on one. Those referrals tend tend to come though, after that kind of work, right? Versus the, you know, I can just like, blast out some stuff and see what sticks. That's the world though, like, we're just so spoiled. If things aren't curated. The thing about this, I think I just had a real big aha moment. If Netflix does a better job at curating the experience for you than your own frickin colleagues, you're probably going to lose, right? Like, like, if YouTube's algorithm is doing a better job at like, you know, your day to day, if Spotify is if your recommendation engines that basically power your entire consumer life, if you as a person can go to your colleagues and like, help create that same thing for them. Guess what, they don't care. Because everywhere else in their life, Amazon just suggest the products that you should buy. And it's so doing for a household when you got a kid and wife, dogs or spouse, whatever. I mean, I don't know, basically, Amazon knows all this stuff, I'm pretty much gonna buy like, I can't imagine going and starting over it like jet.com and Walmart, where like, it's like, figure it all out by yourself. No. Right? So I think you just unlock something really important that if you can't be as personalized and engaging and like create that experience for your colleagues, just consumers everywhere else in their lives.
Chelsea Graham 42:04
And that's the fun part, too, right? You get to know your colleagues, you get to know them as people and as humans, and what's the point of working if we can't get to know each other and enjoy doing it. And like, I don't want to live in a world where my life is blasting out 1000 emails or doing a mass training. Like, I want to get to know the people I work with. That's more fun. Anyway.
Isaac Morehouse 42:30
There there is the promo clip right there, Jared. Right.
Jared Fuller 42:37
Yeah, absolutely. That's the one because in partnerships you're not competing with, like you're competing with Netflix or YouTube, or Spotify, right? Or Amazon, you're competing with the new way that we all expect value to be given to us, which is recommendations and curation. Not just information, hey, here's how partnerships works. Here's all the information it's like no curate it for me in my world where I live and like make it an experience where I'm excited. And that's just like some one on one stuff. Chelsea, this was a very selfish reason for me having on this episode cuz I'm like, I need to talk to someone that's gone through this transition recently. Because I feel like we do have the world to change. I really appreciate you coming on and like geeking out with us on this. This topic. Because yeah, like I said there's 1000s More of us to create.
Chelsea Graham 43:24
Yeah, pleasures all mine. This has been fun. Thanks, guys.
Jared Fuller 43:27
Absolutely. We don't have any plugs this week. So I'll do the thing if you love what we've been doing a partner Acker. We need some love on YouTube, we always do. We never do well, on that channel. I will continuously endlessly self deprecate that channel to the end of time. If you're not subscribed to partner hacker daily, that's ridiculous. Pretty much all of you probably are. There's what going on 2500 People now, and we'll see it partner hacker.com Oh, yeah, I was I was going to do a push for this too. If you listen to us on Apple podcast, just scroll to the end of the podcast. Leave us a review. I would really appreciate that. So there I did self promotional plugs. Good work.
Isaac Morehouse 44:03
I didn't even have to do any promos. There we
Jared Fuller 44:06
go. Alright, Chelsea, we appreciate it. Partner up. We'll see y'all next time.
