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Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast.

In this episode, Vince Menzione and Reis Barrie, CEO of Carve Partners, dive deep into the 12 most common pitfalls that can derail a successful Microsoft partnership. They discuss the misconception that Microsoft will simply send leads, the critical need for a dedicated partnership owner, and why a misalignment in sales compensation can be a recipe for disaster. The conversation also covers the importance of speaking Microsoft’s language, the proper way to leverage certifications and incentives, and the necessity of having a one-page plan. This is a must-listen for any organization looking to maximize its partnership with Microsoft by avoiding the mistakes that lead to stagnant growth and missed opportunities.

If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.

Key Takeaways:

If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.

As we enter the last four months of the calendar year, you are probably asking yourself, “What events should I attend this fall and why?”

Many Partners and Leaders are trying to determine if the big events make the most sense and what they will learn. Many of these events are big and unyieldy, and while you may bump into some friends, you need to really ask yourself if they will help you achieve your greatest results – as a leader, as an organization, or as a partner.

Our attendees tell us they get more accomplished in two full days than in most of the year at our events – they learn from Hyperscaler Leaders, Top Award Winning Partners, and the Masters. Learn from the best, meet the best, grow your business faster and further.

An Ultimate Partner LIVE is like YOUR Masterclass. We begin with a view of “Where We Are Today” as the tectonic shifts are happening faster than ever before. Our first day sessions explore the advances in AI, Hyperscaler Growth, Marketplaces, Co-Selling, Ecosystem Led Growth, and more. These sessions are led from the leaders driving the discussions at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, AvePoint Veeam Software, Carahsoft, Elastic and more.

On Day Two, an Industry Analyst will bring it all together as our industry experts help you plot the future course – applying the learnings to maximize results.

And, you’ll learn more from the Partner Technology firms, Partner Consultants, and others helping partners like you achieve more and walk away with over a million dollars worth of insights, learnings, and practical advice to apply to your business. In fact, we will have over 10 unique workshops at the fall event alone.

You will be in the room with other executives like you, or partner leaders looking to get to that level. Join us for a unique welcome reception and – if you’re fortunate – you’ll be joining our Executive Dinner. This event will feel more intimate than past Ultimate Partner LIVE settings. You’ll love the experience.

I look forward to hosting YOU this fall!

Click HERE while time still lasts.

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Transcript::

REIS BARRIE AUDIO PODCAST

[00:00:00] Reis Barrie: I’ve seen this really interesting trend, frankly, of lately, of people not only just not, not only going net neutral, but going. Uh, incentivizing it. Yeah. And so, absolutely. I think, you know, we’ve all been surrounded by a lot of these stats and, and facts about what partnerships drive, whether it’s, uh, access to more budget, access to more customers, uh, faster sales cycles, bigger deal sizes, all of these things.

[00:00:23] Reis Barrie: Like, you hear these, you hear these outputs, and you start to think like, well, why wouldn’t I incentivize something that gives me that?

[00:00:32] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, your host, and I’m thrilled to welcome a great friend and an expert in the world of partnering to this podcast. Reese Barry is the CEO of Carve Partners. He’s been on stage here in in Boca Raton at our events, and he’s gonna be joining us soon at the next Ultimate Partner Alive Reese.

[00:00:55] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah, it’s always great to be here. It’s so good to have you back. Super excited to, to, frankly, you mentioned the event. I’m, I’m stoked to be there. Uh, I can’t wait.

[00:01:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah, so, and you’ve been supporting us since day one? Yeah. In fact, from the very, I think this is number seven. On the events that we’re doing now.

[00:01:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So incredible time. Yeah. Great to have you back. Yeah, great to have you back here in the studio. You’ve been here a few times. This is not, you’re a familiar face here to our, i, i viewers, listeners.

[00:01:19] Reis Barrie: I am. Yeah. It’s great to be here, frankly. Yeah. It’s, it’s, yeah. Awesome studio. I always, I always love coming down here.

[00:01:25] Reis Barrie: It’s, uh. Pretty quick drive for me too, so, well,

[00:01:27] Vince Menzione: we’re gonna have some more going on. We’ll talk about that at the end. We’ve got some more things coming up in January here in the studio. We’re gonna share with you all soon. But today we’ve got a really incredible topic. You’ve been doing quite a bit of posting lately, by the way, on your own.

[00:01:41] Vince Menzione: I

[00:01:41] Reis Barrie: have been, yeah. Some really great content. I made some commitments to myself and so we’re, uh, we’re, we’re full steam ahead. I love it. Uh, sharing as many insights as we can, getting as much knowledge of the ecosystem as we can. Yeah. So it’s, uh, yeah, I’m super excited

[00:01:53] Vince Menzione: and you’ve got a tremendous amount of insight.

[00:01:55] Vince Menzione: You work with some of the top bias vs some of the top SDCs, as we call them now, software development corporations. And today we’re gonna spend some time talking about, we, we’ve always talked about like what it takes to be the most successful. Mm-hmm. But today we’re gonna roll over on that and say. About pitfalls.

[00:02:12] Vince Menzione: We’re gonna talk about you, you call it the 12 pitfalls to successfully partnering with Microsoft.

[00:02:18] Reis Barrie: Yeah.

[00:02:19] Vince Menzione: And so I thought we’d start here, right? This is a, a set of 12. We’ll take, we’ll take our listeners through this massive opportunity for them to drive the greatest results. So the first one you have is Microsoft sending us leads.

[00:02:32] Vince Menzione: And this is something I’ve heard many times mm-hmm. From organizations, they kind of expect it. But why don’t you take us through why, why that’s a pitfall and why organizations misunderstand working with Microsoft.

[00:02:44] Reis Barrie: Yeah, a hundred percent. So, and, and even just to back, back up a like a moment from there is I would say, people always ask me what to do and.

[00:02:55] Reis Barrie: It’s just as easy if not easier to say like, oh, just don’t do these things. Yeah. And you’ll naturally gravitate towards the things you should be doing. I love it. I love it. And so I, the concept of, of what not to do is frankly, something that I, I resonates with me. I’m probably learning more, more what not to do than what to do.

[00:03:11] Reis Barrie: Um, and so, yeah, starting with number, like starting with the first one you mentioned, just like that, that leads conversation. And so, oh man, this is. By far the most common conversation I have when I’m first yes. Jumping in or starting with a, starting with a particular someone on the, like who has dealt with Microsoft less or they’re earlier in kind of their partnership journey.

[00:03:31] Reis Barrie: And it’s often this, this, uh, resetting of the frame of like, well, what’s the value of a Microsoft partnership? And they went into it for whatever reason, with the assumption of, Hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna list on marketplace. And all of a sudden, you know, this windfall of, of deals is gonna, is gonna, is gonna come towards me.

[00:03:50] Reis Barrie: Um, and most of these times these people I’m talking to are like maybe recently or part of I v’s. Success, uh, leveraging some of the great value, they can’t get there. And they got published, they got transactable and they kind of just like. I’d sit around and like, wait. Um, so bad. Yeah. It’s un it’s unfortunate, but we reset that frame and, and, and it’s not about, um, it’s not about getting leads on the front end.

[00:04:15] Reis Barrie: I’m not saying you never get leads ’cause you, you actually, once you start, start the flywheel and start the momentum, like you do actually get these things. Um, but it’s not where you start. It’s like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a, that’s a very mature, um, part of the partnership. And so I often just, um. Talk about, hey, we have to be proactive.

[00:04:34] Reis Barrie: So we list doesn’t mean anything’s gonna happen from that listing. We have to start being proactive in terms of what we’re actually doing. Um, and then just resetting the frame of Microsoft is an amplifier, like they are, you know. I use a lot of different metaphors in this one ’cause, try to make it relatable, but like we’re even us sitting here today, we have microphones, right?

[00:04:54] Reis Barrie: Yes. If I don’t talk into the microphone, nothing, nothing actually happens, right? That’s right. The Microsoft, so if, if Microsoft is the amplifier or the microphone in this case, like you have to put, put stuff into it to amplify our voice. Yep. Right? And so Microsoft, that’s a, it’s a great analogy because what we put into Microsoft, um, comes out into the ecosystem amplified.

[00:05:15] Reis Barrie: Um, and so. Um, it’s really on that front end. It’s about putting, putting things in, showing that you can win, showing the value of, of you as a company. Um. Starting to partake in different programs and different benefits of being a, a partner that now that you’re transactable, um, and then you start to see a lot of the, kind of the flywheel start to spin and then more mature stages, you start to do like more fun things with account planning and lead,

[00:05:42] Vince Menzione: lead gen.

[00:05:42] Vince Menzione: I also think it’s like a lack of understanding around how Microsoft works, right? Yeah. I had there, somebody posted something on LinkedIn about Microsoft not giving. Their partner’s leads mm-hmm. A while ago and I was thinking about it and saying that’s not, that’s not the way they’re wired as an organization.

[00:05:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. As well. They co-selling is really, we’ll talk more about the totally opportunities around co-selling, but they’re not just flipping you leads. Mm-hmm. It’s not like a lot of companies treat. Partners like the channel. Mm-hmm. And they push things out their way. Yeah. And that’s not near, that’s not the way Microsoft operates.

[00:06:14] Vince Menzione: I think it’s understanding like the core of how Microsoft sales organization operates as well, don’t you?

[00:06:20] Reis Barrie: Yeah. A hundred. And even in partnerships in general, like the, the concept of like, I’m a partner, so I get leads, is like, it’s a very shallow partnership if like Exactly. If that’s the, if that’s the expectation.

[00:06:30] Reis Barrie: Um. It’s like that’s a, it’s a, it’s an output, but it’s, it’s, it’s one of the many, many, many outputs, frankly. Exactly.

[00:06:37] Vince Menzione: Um, totally. And it’s something that’s, yeah, I’ve, I’ve heard it many times. I’ve heard it up being on the inside. Mm-hmm. I’ve heard working with organizations when I was consulting with them as well.

[00:06:47] Vince Menzione: Uh, it just seems, it just seems to be the biggest, one of the biggest misnomers there. A hundred percent. But I think one of the things too is, let’s talk about another pitfall is you often say partners succeed. They don’t succeed without a clear owner. Yeah. And this is another area too, where people just like, like, okay, we have a partnership with Microsoft, but nobody’s owning it.

[00:07:08] Vince Menzione: Who should own the Microsoft partnership from day one in the organization? And why does it matter?

[00:07:13] Reis Barrie: Yeah, that’s a, that’s another really common one that we get really. Um, and so if, even if you take, take a step back from who, who should own it? It’s the concept of having an owner. So yeah, so often I, like I go in and I, it’s this person’s third job, this person’s second job.

[00:07:30] Reis Barrie: This person’s like the back burner thing that they do on, you know, when they’re, when they’re have extra time on Friday. Um, and that’s like, that’s the results that come out of it, right? Yes. It’s, it’s the third, fourth priority of, of multiple people. And so. That’s what kind of, it shows very clearly not only to your results, but also to Microsoft, frankly.

[00:07:51] Reis Barrie: Um, and so the concept is having an owner of somebody who wakes up every day, and that their, their role is to move the partnership forward is something that, um, if you’re committing to this, this, um, you know, this, this partnership, which is a behemoth of a partnership. They’re a gigantic, massive company.

[00:08:08] Reis Barrie: Um, there is huge returns to be had by partnering with them. But you don’t account for the complexity of it requiring like a dedicated owner. Yeah. Like with, there’s, there’s a, there’s a paradox that with, with, with high, uh, with high impact comes high complexity. Yes. And Microsoft partnerships are not, they’re not necessarily easy by any means, but done.

[00:08:32] Reis Barrie: Right. Generate significant revenue

[00:08:34] Vince Menzione: and it requires that I talk about maniacal focus is one of the principles. And really when you start, when you back up from it, you go, okay, I need my entire organization to be part of this, and that means I need to get the technical team involved, product team involved.

[00:08:49] Vince Menzione: I need to get marketing involved. I need to get sales involved. I need to get the executive leadership of the organization and I need to align all of my organizations to all of Microsoft. In a way that’s gonna make for a complete partnership. Right. Hundred percent. I think to your point, that’s, that’s a full-time job.

[00:09:05] Vince Menzione: Oh

[00:09:06] Reis Barrie: yeah.

[00:09:06] Vince Menzione: And maybe multiple people and Thenso and maybe multiple people in the organization. Yeah. And it’s why they need organizations like Carv in order to be successful doing it. Right?

[00:09:13] Reis Barrie: Yeah. And so, I mean, yes, I agree with, that’s the last, the car statement for sure. But the, uh, the, and it kind of brings back to the, the original question, which is like, where does it sit?

[00:09:23] Reis Barrie: And so. Um, we have these like really strategic alliance teams that sit, sit with partnership. Yes. And usually I see partnerships sitting somewhere under like the, um, the revenue, like the revenue organization, whether it’s the CRO or, uh, VP of sales type of type of, um, structure. But that’s, but it is a dedicated person and or team.

[00:09:44] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, that is, is there to drive a, a partnership channel, partnership revenue. Um, and frankly, this person. Has to be, um, they’re a quarterback across Yeah. Every department. Every department. So again, we’re gonna, I think we’re gonna talk about finance here soon. We’re gonna talk about sales, marketing, operations, product.

[00:10:04] Reis Barrie: Like they have to quarterback all of these different departments across organization. ’cause when partnership, like, uh, partnership is truly, um, getting all of those departments to. Uh, lean into the, the needs of the partnership. Yeah. And, and align,

[00:10:19] Vince Menzione: right? Yeah. So one of the areas you were talking about, like aligning, you’re talking about VP of sales mm-hmm.

[00:10:25] Vince Menzione: Is this whole area around compensation.

[00:10:27] Reis Barrie: Yeah.

[00:10:27] Vince Menzione: People miss, they misalign their compensation models as well. Yeah. I think that’s one of the other pitfalls that you see.

[00:10:34] Reis Barrie: Yeah, totally. So, um, I, I would say that at a baseline it has to be net neutral. Absolutely net neutral. At least. And so if there’s any aspect of like working with Microsoft or any partner for that aspect.

[00:10:47] Reis Barrie: Um, feels like a detriment or attacks to me as a salesperson. Like that is a recipe for failure. Yeah. Um, that’s one of the few, there’s very few things that I say like, do not start, like, do not start until this is solved. Yeah. That is like one of the foundational things. Like, I, I do not recommend starting a partnership until that aspect is solved, because unwinding that distaste for partnership in your, like in your sales organization is extremely difficult.

[00:11:12] Reis Barrie: If you start on a bad, bad foot and then you’re trying to. Pivot to a, to a good foot, it’s very difficult. Or, or taking

[00:11:17] Vince Menzione: the, the deals away from the sales reps and saying, well, these are Microsoft deals, so you’re not gonna get paid on these and we’ll have our partner people do them. I’ve seen that happen as well.

[00:11:25] Vince Menzione: And that, that messes things up. It

[00:11:26] Reis Barrie: just, yeah, it, it leaves a really bad taste in, in your organization around, around partnerships. And so, um, that’s one of my first like non-start, like one, a few non-starters I should say.

[00:11:36] Vince Menzione: So get compensation, right. At least. So get it right. And then

[00:11:39] Reis Barrie: I’ve seen this really interesting trend, frankly, of lately, of people.

[00:11:42] Reis Barrie: Not only just not, not only going net neutral, but going. Uh, incentivizing it. Yeah. And so, absolutely. I think, you know, we’ve all been surrounded by a lot of these stats and, and facts about what partnerships drive, whether it’s, uh, access to more budget, access to more customers, uh, faster sales cycles, bigger deal sizes, all of these things.

[00:12:02] Reis Barrie: Like, you hear these, you hear these outputs and you start to think like, well, why wouldn’t I incentivize something that gives me that? Exactly. Um, and I’m starting to see a lot of companies start to, yeah. Actually incentivize the marketplace transaction or incentivize the, uh, co-sell deal for their own reps as well, similar to how Microsoft incentivizes their reps.

[00:12:19] Reis Barrie: Which

[00:12:19] Vince Menzione: makes, makes perfect sense, especially when you’re jump starting a new, a new thing like marketplace. Mm-hmm. If you weren’t in marketplace before or it’s a new partnership.

[00:12:27] Reis Barrie: Yeah.

[00:12:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah. A hundred percent. So you mentioned another hidden area, a pitfall around finance. So could you dive in on that one for us?

[00:12:36] Reis Barrie: So anytime we’re, anytime we’re jumping in to a, to a, to a supportive partnership, uh, with one of our clients, finance is the one we probably usually start with. Okay. Because they’re usually one of the harder stakeholders to, to, um, convince, to get aligned and convince. Um, but ultimately there’s like, there’s two main aspects that I’m trying to align with finance on.

[00:12:58] Reis Barrie: Um, one is just the concept of private offers, right? Our customers are buying a different way. We’re receiving money in a different way. And so we’ve gotta make sure that we actually can receive that money and everything is like tied up so that that process is sound. Um, that’s like the less fun of the two.

[00:13:14] Reis Barrie: So the more fun one is more related to, uh, incentives and benefits. And frankly, Microsoft pays their partners a lot of money. Yeah. Uh, when they align to Microsoft priorities. And it just so happens that Microsoft priorities often align with. Partners making money as well, selling their own solutions. So, um, biggest thing there is aligning with finance of, hey, when we earn these incentive dollars, they’re gonna come back to us.

[00:13:39] Reis Barrie: We’re gonna reinvest in the partnership. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, frankly, we started working clients six months ago, or, or, or so, and, you know, across our entire portfolio, we’re in like the, the tens of millions in incentive dollars that we get from different various Microsoft incentives for our clients. And so this, that’s huge.

[00:13:56] Reis Barrie: This, uh, huge numbers. Oh yeah. They’re huge numbers, especially this year. Um, yeah, some of the numbers that they’re throwing out there with, uh, these incentives are just, uh, crazy. I’ve never seen it. Um, and so they keep growing year over year, and I keep getting surprised year over year. Um, but with this particular client, we, uh, you know, we, we align with finance.

[00:14:13] Reis Barrie: The money comes back to the partnership team and they. Uh, they paid for their Ignite sponsorship with that, which is a big bill for anyone who’s sponsored the night before. Um, they paid for their Ignite sponsorship with that funding. Um, they, they’re, they’re, there’s Reston. Yeah, I was gonna say people, people

[00:14:32] Vince Menzione: use that, that funding.

[00:14:33] Vince Menzione: They’ll be, they’ll be support the ultimate partner live event as they’ll, as there’ll be, there’ll be

[00:14:36] Reis Barrie: resin sponsoring that. Um. And they, they, you know, obviously fund some of the work that we do for them and get a lot of Big R, big ROI on that. Yeah. And so the amount of. Um, you know, injecting the money back into the partnership just again pushes the flywheel back.

[00:14:53] Reis Barrie: And so we wanna make sure we align with finance on both the, you know, they’re gonna receive money in a new way via like private offers or marketplace. And also they’re gonna start to see dollars come in from Microsoft. And we wanna make sure that that doesn’t just go to the bottom line. That it comes back to that flywheel.

[00:15:07] Reis Barrie: You bring

[00:15:08] Vince Menzione: up a really good point. First of all, the predictability of knowing it’s coming. Uh, always a factor too, ’cause like where did this money come from? What is it accountable to? And I’ve seen organizations put it on the bottom line. Mm-hmm. As opposed to attributing it to the right spot in the organization.

[00:15:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And then reinvesting the money, as you say here. So I think it’s really important that organizations get that right.

[00:15:29] Reis Barrie: Yeah. A hundred percent. Once it’s, once it’s at the bottom line, it’s very hard to get, like, it’s very hard to get it, get it back to the partnership team from that. So that proactive alignment just, uh, is a, is a must.

[00:15:40] Vince Menzione: So this next one is near and dear to my heart as well because it’s about speaking Microsoft. That’s one of the pitfalls. Organizations don’t understand what sellers really want to hear. Yep. Right. And. We help them kind of get that training, that muscle. Yeah. Worked up in a way, but take us through that and what you see.

[00:15:59] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so again, if you, anyone who follows me on LinkedIn or watched like my posts or my webinar, like almost all of my content is around this because, uh, yeah, I get, uh, I get the privilege to work with. Thousands of Microsoft sellers. Um, and, and there are

[00:16:16] Vince Menzione: thousands, I think it’s 50,000 now. There’s tens of thousands.

[00:16:19] Reis Barrie: And so I get to, I get the privilege to, I always understate numbers ’cause it’s hard for me to, no, no. It’s the amount, the amount of people that there are at this, at the company. Uh, and so I get the privilege to work with all these sellers. And then, and then, um, that means I get to hear the good, the good.

[00:16:33] Reis Barrie: The good pitches. The bad pitches. Yeah. Uh, I get to hear a lot of these things. I get to hear what resonates and what, what doesn’t resonate. Um, and kind of pretty early on I kind of started identifying, hey, like these people are talking most about their product and I can see the, I can see the blank stairs on the seller’s faces.

[00:16:50] Reis Barrie: ’cause, um, because their product is, the product is their language. And if there’s, that’s right. I think the latest number is half a million partners. And so if a seller can’t be expected to understand a half a million languages, no. Um, and so you have to be, you have to be that translator. And so you have to, you have to get it into their language.

[00:17:06] Reis Barrie: And frankly, the partners that cut through the noise are the ones that do the best job at talking Microsoft. Yeah.

[00:17:15] Vince Menzione: Translating to Microsoft, right? Yeah.

[00:17:16] Reis Barrie: And so, and I’ll often say like, treat, like, just treat Microsoft like a customer. Treat your partners like customers, frankly. That’s right. Um, ’cause if we, if we, we would never dream of talking to, um, our customers in this like.

[00:17:30] Reis Barrie: Internal jargon, technical language. We talk about, we resonate with, with what their needs are, right? And so we talk in their language. So it’s, it’s the same concept of Microsoft. They’re, they’re, you’re, you have to talk to them in their language. They understand what priority are you aligned to? How are you gonna influence their compensation?

[00:17:47] Reis Barrie: Like, you know, how are you gonna make it easy? Uh. How is, how are you easy to work with, frankly? Like how are you

[00:17:54] Vince Menzione: preparing for it as well? Right? Yeah. Because so many times these sellers are not well prepared. They don’t really understand, especially when you get to seller, to seller combat. And those sellers just really, they jump on a call and it’s like they’re winging it.

[00:18:09] Reis Barrie: Yeah.

[00:18:10] Vince Menzione: And they’re just going into their sales pitch.

[00:18:12] Reis Barrie: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:12] Vince Menzione: And they’re just expecting Microsoft to absorb it. Like a customer would absorb it. Yep. And then just take it and go, oh yeah, sure. Great. Mm-hmm. We can just go do this together. And. Being able to have that tangible conversation with Microsoft is so important.

[00:18:25] Vince Menzione: A hundred percent. Yeah.

[00:18:26] Reis Barrie: Just like you build scripts for your customers, like you, you have to build like what are your, you know, what are your, you know, your 10 go-to phrases of how we provide value to, to you. Like, have those, have those phrases just locked and loaded, ready to go? You, you jump on a call and it’s, and it’s, you know, this is how we as a partner or as your partner, um, provide value to you and make it easy to work with and this is what we need from you to, to be successful in this deal.

[00:18:51] Vince Menzione: You almost want to create like a dictionary for your, for your partners. Oh yeah. Maybe you’ve already done some of that. We do, yeah. There you go. See, we do, whether it’s speaking call language, acronyms, whether it’s speaking language acronyms, or just the

[00:19:02] Reis Barrie: translation of, of what, what programs they’re uh, involved in and what benefits.

[00:19:07] Reis Barrie: They can do and how, how they’re aligned to their, to their priorities. Like, um, part of our like seller enablement and stuff that we, we do for our partners is, is really about I see. I

[00:19:19] Vince Menzione: see an AI tool coming here somewhere. Oh, for sure. I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m sure there’s an AI

[00:19:24] Reis Barrie: tool coming, uh, like a translate tool coming there for sure.

[00:19:27] Reis Barrie: Microsoft translating. Yeah, I like it.

[00:19:28] Vince Menzione: This next one is also another pitfall that I’ve seen quite a bit of. Um, it’s, it’s kind of like sitting back and bragging about your badges that you’ve got, your certifications. I’ll never forget, uh, doing some work way back, one of the big sis, big large si, uh, international si and all they talked about was their certs.

[00:19:46] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Like that was gonna be a reason why it was gonna be compelling for Microsoft to just jump and give them all their business. Yeah. Take us through that one.

[00:19:55] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So actually, so that’s, I. Just very timely, uh, because, um, there’s the, um, certified software designations Yeah. Which are in Microsoft years, very, very new.

[00:20:07] Reis Barrie: Um, very new. I remember just a couple years now. So, and if you rewind, you can just hear how much they are talking about them and the importance of them. Yeah. Which to me tells me that there’s a bigger, there’s, there’s even a bigger plan than what they already unlock. Um, if they’re, if they’re putting this much emphasis behind.

[00:20:24] Reis Barrie: Getting them. Um, and so it’s, it’s, it’s, again, it’s one of those things that like, it kind of goes back to the like, um. If you build it, you know, they’ll come type of thing. And that being a bit of a fallacy in the Microsoft, Microsoft land. And so, um, just getting the certification doesn’t really do a whole ton if you don’t leverage all the, the levers that it unlocks.

[00:20:42] Reis Barrie: And so, uh, whether that’s tapping into different incentives and benefits, that’s like, I would say one of the primary pieces of getting the certification. So not just getting the certification, but actually taking advantage of all the things that it unlocks from a partnership benefits standpoint. Huge. Um, as well.

[00:21:00] Reis Barrie: Um. There’s different programs that you get to get to get to tap into, which might be like a partner reported. A CR is probably the biggest one where I, I, I see so many partners get the certification and then not take advantage of partner reported a CR, which is like. Just another, another value to stack it, put in your value stack when you’re talking to a Microsoft.

[00:21:18] Reis Barrie: Um, and,

[00:21:19] Vince Menzione: and for those that don’t know, that’s prac.

[00:21:21] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Pricker Prac. Yeah. Parker reported a CR. And so ultimately for like, for a SaaS solution where the a, the, the consumption lands on your tenant, this is the way to ensure that the Microsoft seller gets that long tail consumption as well, not just the upfront, up, upfront component.

[00:21:35] Reis Barrie: So

[00:21:35] Vince Menzione: super important to the Microsoft sellers. So you gotta be able to handle that. Yeah. Because otherwise they, you’re ignoring, you’re ignoring where they’re gonna make money. A

[00:21:43] Reis Barrie: hundred percent. Yeah. Um, and honestly, the partner report a CR is, is, um, this year particularly, they’ve made it, um, of course with any new rollout, there’s some issues, so I’m not gonna de deny that there’s issues with it this year.

[00:21:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah. But, um, but they’ve made it, they’ve made it a lot easier for partners to report. And so that just means that there’s a, there’s an expectation from sellers that, oh. We’re being told it’s easier, it’s part easier. Partners, uh, must be reporting more of it. And so if we’re, if we’re eligible to do it and we’re not doing the thing, like that’s, it’s not a good, it’s not a good story to tell when you have the opportunity to, to take part in it and make that part of your value stack.

[00:22:19] Reis Barrie: It’s, it’s, it’s a really meaningful piece. Yeah. Um, and it gets you

[00:22:23] Vince Menzione: a lot more attention from the sellers. It does.

[00:22:25] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It does. And I’m not, I’m not gonna ignore the fact that it is, it is a, it is a badging, it is to an extent a badging too. And so. Um, you know, you have, uh, Jamie Bain on here a lot. Yeah. And he talks about all the different, like touch points that part that that customers go through before they, at 28 moments.

[00:22:41] Reis Barrie: Yeah.

[00:22:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah.

[00:22:41] Reis Barrie: And before they, I’m one of those people I, I show up ready to buy because I’ve already done my 28, probably 50 moments. Exactly. Um, and so. It does provide some, like a, an element of social proof for certainty for customers too, as, as, as it is, it is also badging, uh, but it is so much more than that as well.

[00:22:58] Reis Barrie: So I don’t wanna discount the fact that it, it does provide that, that social proof on their marketplace as well to

[00:23:02] Vince Menzione: customers. It does, it does. So this next one, number seven, is really important as well, and people. They overlook it in many respects. And it’s actually having a plan. Yeah. And having a very concise plan.

[00:23:13] Vince Menzione: You talk about having a one page plan. Take us through that as a pitfall and why organizations need to pay attention here.

[00:23:20] Reis Barrie: So this is, there’s a simple, there’s a, there’s a, there’s two pieces to this. Um, the one page plan, um. I stress the importance of it. ’cause it seems, it, it, uh, it is, is, uh, achievable, very achievable than like, if you were to say, have a 30 page plan.

[00:23:34] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, but it does two things. One, if you have a one page plan, it means you actually have a plan, uh, which is the first checkbox that you gotta, you gotta, you gotta have. And so it’s a, it’s a, it’s an easy way to just make sure that you do have a plan. You are working towards something. Um, you have, you have some goals.

[00:23:52] Reis Barrie: You have it where you, where you align with their priorities outlined. Um. We’re actually working towards something. So that’s like foundation number one is just check the box, have a plan. Yeah. The second one is honestly like you meet so many different personas across, um, Microsoft, that, um, you really want to have this like, you know, often these, sometimes they’re called like battle cards or one page or whatever it might be, but you really want to have this piece that just like, is a highly consumable, simplified version of if you do have this.

[00:24:22] Reis Barrie: Maybe you have this 30, 30 page partnership plan with Microsoft that’s, you know, really in depth and all these things, but you really want to have this simplified piece that you can just, whether it’s handout or remember back to and talk to. Yeah. Um, because you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you know. You’re gonna go to Ultimate Partners and you’re gonna meet all these people, you’re gonna go to all these places, you’re gonna see these people and you’re gonna want to have like, be able to quickly reference back to what are the things that I am working towards in my partnership with Microsoft, and how do we align and how do we sell together, and how are we better together and all these different things.

[00:24:55] Reis Barrie: And so we consolidate it all in one page so that we have this essentially that what feels like an elevator pitch of, of our, yeah. Why are we partners? What are we working towards

[00:25:04] Vince Menzione: together? I’ll, I’ll add another layer to that ’cause I did this way back in the day too, is like, it’s, it’s also, it’s your rallying point with your executive team.

[00:25:13] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Yeah. When you give, do your, hopefully you’re getting in front of your executive team and doing a review on this is such an tangible, important part of your business. Totally. Uh, that you’re kind of, and, and you know, execs are not gonna sit, go through your 30 page plan, but you have that one pager.

[00:25:28] Vince Menzione: And it identifies their area of the business as well. ’cause it’s gonna to have all the touch points in the business and what’s working and what’s not working. Yeah. And I think it’s super important you do that and you con concisely communicate with your executive team.

[00:25:40] Reis Barrie: Yeah.

[00:25:41] Vince Menzione: I I No more words ’cause you know, it’s perfectly said.

[00:25:44] Vince Menzione: It’s ’cause it’s, it’s painful when it’s not working. It really is. It’s just painful.

[00:25:49] Reis Barrie: It really is. Yeah. Um, yeah, the, the, that component and just. What are we working towards? Yeah. I always miss the people, like it’s a simple one, but it, it’s always missed. Like it’s just going through the motions without like, what are we working towards?

[00:26:03] Vince Menzione: And I come back to, I come back to the internal victory all the time, Reese’s, because I’ve seen it so many times. And the CEO will say the right things. The, the executive team will say the right things. Mm-hmm. But. When you peel back, they’re not really, and when you’re talking about billion $2,000,000,008 billion companies, yeah.

[00:26:21] Vince Menzione: There’s a lot more to carry in that relationship. Oh yeah. And you’ve gotta get everybody aligned the right way. It’s so important. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Good stuff. So, uh. You talked about partner center a little bit and about sharing referrals. Uh, you, you touched on this one a little bit, but this was number eight on your list of, uh, pitfalls.

[00:26:41] Vince Menzione: Take us through this a little bit more too, because you were talking about a little bit about this.

[00:26:46] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So when it comes to referral sharing, like this is the other topic that, yeah. Microsoft language and referral sharing. If you, if there was two things that I’d probably say a hundred times a month.

[00:26:56] Reis Barrie: It’s, it’s, it’s these two. Um, and so. Yeah. Referral sharing is the foundation of most partnerships, but particularly for Microsoft partnerships, we’re like referral sharing back and forth. Yeah. Um, is just incredibly important. ’cause data is, like, data is essentially the foundation of this partnership.

[00:27:14] Reis Barrie: Absolutely. And so, um. Not even getting to the point now where, like I’m saying like, you should be co-selling. You shouldn’t be co-selling, but just even if you’re not co-selling right now, like there’s a, there’s an option to share, share referrals that you’re not co-selling on. Maybe you’re not ready to share, like to actually co-sell.

[00:27:29] Reis Barrie: You’re not mature. It’s not time yet, yet. Right. But just the act of getting referrals in into partner center is a huge. Has a huge impact on just showing Microsoft, like where are we penetrated? What customers are we talking to? Yeah. What industries are we, are we impacting? What’s the total, like, what’s the total, uh, area that we’re, that we’re, we’re working in?

[00:27:50] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Uh, where, where are we strongest in terms of geography? Um, are we mostly this country? Are we most, are we global? Like it tells them there’s so many data, data touch points that it gives that if you either log nothing. Then they have no data to touch point off of, or they log or you log partial, then they have partial data and they’re assuming it’s full data, um, which is not good either.

[00:28:12] Vince Menzione: I’ve seen people put too many in that were not even deals that they’re working with Microsoft on as well.

[00:28:17] Reis Barrie: Yeah. That works against you. Yeah, it works That, yeah, that works against you as well. And so, um, there’s a, there’s just this, this need of, we need to log relevant, relevant referrals into partner center, um, because.

[00:28:32] Reis Barrie: It’s how they make decisions. It’s how you show up on their scorecards, their dashboards. It’s how they make their decisions. And when they’re looking to, what partners are we gonna manage this year, they need, they need touch points and data, data to, to provide that. And so, so it’s

[00:28:46] Vince Menzione: establishing your credibility with Microsoft as a hundred

[00:28:49] Reis Barrie: percent.

[00:28:50] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, and I’ll even, I could probably talk about this next piece all day, so I’ll just stay at service level, but, um. Microsoft is one of, if not the leading AI company in the world. Yeah. And like, if it’s, it’s, you know, there’s 28 touch points that Jamie Vain talks about. Like that’s, uh, I, I, I personally believe that that’s soon to be a lot of assessed by ai.

[00:29:15] Reis Barrie: And so yes, if, if AI is looking at this, all of these different touch points and referrals happens to be one of those touch points, um. You want to show up? Well, yeah.

[00:29:26] Vince Menzione: Um, you wanna show up really well? Really good point. So the next one, which we’re, we’re up to nine already, by the way. We’re almost, we’re almost through the list of 12.

[00:29:35] Vince Menzione: So hopefully you’re watching Yeah. And listening and paying attention and rewinding. Yeah. Uh, this one is about treating all deals as co-sell deals. This one is interesting to me ’cause I think, I think people like over pivot in some respects towards co-selling. I think so too. Yeah. So tell us about that one.

[00:29:51] Reis Barrie: It was super timely ’cause I just literally had a conversation yesterday with, uh. I, I won’t, I won’t end the company, but very, very large, very established, uh, organization. And as we were doing a workshop with them, and I, okay, like how many, you know, how many deals do you share? Why don’t we share about a, you know, I think it was about a thousand a year or something like that.

[00:30:10] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, okay, great. Like what’s your, how many, how many of those are co-sell? Well, we actually, all of them, so. That’s a lot of deals to expect

[00:30:19] Vince Menzione: to be co-sell. Super

[00:30:20] Reis Barrie: fascinating. So one, like, I don’t even think they could take a thousand calls if they, if they had, if they, if they booked calls with every single seller, like a thousand calls, that’d be a lot.

[00:30:28] Reis Barrie: Like, that’s a lot. I, I doubt they could even scale to that, that amount. Uh, so it’s, part of it is, can you scale to that? Another piece is like, where do you actually need help? Um, exactly. You know, they’ve been around for 50 years, like. Yeah, I, I have full confidence in this particular example. Like they, they can sell a lot of their solutions by themselves.

[00:30:46] Reis Barrie: Yeah. They don’t need Microsoft at all. And so, but there are, there are three to five really valuable use cases where we, they really do truly need help on co-sell. And so when you, when you put everything as co-sell, but not, but you don’t actually need true help on everything, uh, it dilutes from the fact of where you actually do need help from.

[00:31:04] Reis Barrie: And so, um, when we identify. When we come into some of these, some of these places who are sharing everything as co-sell, we wanna identify, okay, one, like what’s your capacity to actually to take calls? Because if I book, if I book 50 calls this week for you, like are you gonna be able to do it or not do it?

[00:31:21] Reis Barrie: Um, and some people have giant, giant teams that can do it and some people just can’t. So what’s the actual capacity to do that? And that’ll dictate. How much we can actually, uh, look at. And so, and then we look at what are the three to five like use cases that are really high value for you to talk to a Microsoft seller where you have a really good, uh, case to talk to a Microsoft seller.

[00:31:42] Reis Barrie: So, uh, we’re going there with actual, like, we need this type of support, not just going there and say, oh, I just, I want to, I wanna talk

[00:31:48] Vince Menzione: about this customer. Um, and it, it makes the impact so much greater if you pick the 1, 2, 3, whatever the number is and where you really need help.

[00:31:58] Reis Barrie: Yeah.

[00:31:58] Vince Menzione: Totally. I need to reach the CIO.

[00:32:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I need to have this conversation. I need Microsoft to really like lean in on, on our relationship. ’cause my competitors are in there as well. What, whatever that might be a hundred percent. But if you try to do that across a thousand deals, you’re not gonna get the support. Yeah. You’re just not gonna, it’s not gonna happen.

[00:32:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah.

[00:32:16] Reis Barrie: So we’re just, we’re trying to create like. As many positive experiences between the partner and the MI and Microsoft seller as I possibly can. And so, uh, there’s al it’s very rare that I’ve seen where someone can create, like truly needs that much value from Microsoft seller. And there’s a great, great cause for that.

[00:32:33] Reis Barrie: So when we, when we narrow down, we actually create more positive experiences, actually come, it comes back to the lead situation, which create more positive experience of easy to work with, high value partner. Um. Then actually like, then you start to get into some interesting like account planning type stuff.

[00:32:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Um, those are fun. Yeah, those are fun. They’re, so this next one, number 10, talks about rewards and incentives. And we, we, you were touching on this earlier about like, there’s so much more out there right now with Microsoft, but, and it could be rocket fuel, but not using them effectively, underusing them.

[00:33:05] Vince Menzione: Where should partners start?

[00:33:07] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so we, we’ve already, uh, we’ve already established the, uh. Don’t put it at the bottom line. Yeah, that’s the, that’s, that’s a bad one. That’s where you establish what not to do. Yeah. Uh, we’ve also established to tell finance it’s coming ’cause uh, probably one of the worst situations I ever had to try to work with a partner on is where they didn’t tell finance it was coming.

[00:33:26] Reis Barrie: They don’t know it’s there. Uh, finance thought it was a mistake and sent it back to Microsoft. Oh. And so not good. Once you send it back to Microsoft, they’re not gonna, they’re not sending it back. It’s, it’s not gonna come back that easily. And so we’ve already established those with, those are two things that we wanna make sure we’re aligned on and not doing.

[00:33:42] Reis Barrie: Um, but in terms of like what we, what we, what we are doing, um, anytime we can use it as a, uh, pre-sales or post-sales incentive to get a customer to either, uh, commit faster or buy more. Um, these are, these are good use cases. Um, anytime we can, uh, take it back in-house and, um, re uh, reinvest in the partnership.

[00:34:07] Reis Barrie: That’s, those are good use cases. I’ve seen partners where they’ve actually used some of the funding to, um. You know, be like their, uh, actually their Quest customer swag bucket where they’ve sent, like, they keep, they kept customers on like a swag list and, and used all the incentive money from Microsoft to keep the, keep the funnel going of, of any co-sell deal.

[00:34:27] Reis Barrie: Got got a particular like swag package. I love it. I love it. And so you can do some fun, you can do some fun stuff with it, but ultimately it comes back to. Um, how are, how are we reinvesting it? Either you can reinvest it into headcount, you can reinvest it into events, you can reinvest it into, uh, co-marketing or just marketing to generate leads.

[00:34:44] Reis Barrie: People say Microsoft doesn’t gimme leads, uh, they give you a lot of money and you can use that money to get leads. That’s right. Um, and so, uh, the fundamentals come back to, um, how are we using it to. Move the flywheel faster and faster and faster because, um, reinvesting it back into the partnership. And, and there’s many ways you can do that.

[00:35:07] Reis Barrie: Um. I’ve, I’ve seen that be the exponential growth that partners are like really looking for.

[00:35:13] Vince Menzione: And you mentioned earlier, I’ll reiterate it now, that there’s a lot more money coming back to partners now than ever. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s actually, it is a factor by of 2,

[00:35:24] Reis Barrie: 3,

[00:35:24] Vince Menzione: 4. What do you think the factor is?

[00:35:26] Reis Barrie: Um, so I would say the, um, this is a, you put me on the spot, so I’m gonna give you on the spot rough number.

[00:35:34] Reis Barrie: I love it. So I would, I would give it like a. Uh, from numbers we’re seeing like we’re able to, to pull in probably three x the amount X that we did last year. Three

[00:35:42] Vince Menzione: x. You’re that partners. Yeah. It’s time. It’s a lot, it’s time.

[00:35:45] Reis Barrie: Um, but, but also get it right, its. It’s easier. Yeah. Um, in many aspects to, to acquire the, the funds ’cause it is getting, it is getting easier.

[00:35:54] Reis Barrie: And then the bucket of funds is either like, uh, caps are getting raised or removed. Uh, new programs are getting added to either like where post-sales, maybe it was just a post-sales program before, now there’s a pre-sales component to it as well. Nice. Um, and, and just different aspects are getting, uh.

[00:36:13] Reis Barrie: It’s getting easier to, it’s getting easier to pull it in. Um, and it’s getting into bank accounts faster. Yeah. Frankly, in many ways.

[00:36:21] Vince Menzione: So we’re up to 11. I can’t

[00:36:22] Reis Barrie: believe it.

[00:36:23] Vince Menzione: Up to 11 already. We’re gonna go through ’em one more time at the end. Yeah.

[00:36:26] Reis Barrie: Can’t believe it. This

[00:36:27] Vince Menzione: one is, I wanna ask you that this one partners scale.

[00:36:29] Vince Menzione: What’s the first thing that breaks. Ooh, usually operations. Operations usually. Um,

[00:36:35] Reis Barrie: yeah, it’s usually operations. ’cause we’re like, um, yeah, we’re, we’re, it’s like a lot of pill folks are sales and marketing focused and so it’s, it’s a lot of times the operations, the piece that I see that, that get overlooked and so, yeah.

[00:36:45] Reis Barrie: And it gets

[00:36:46] Vince Menzione: overlooked sometimes early in the process too, right? It, they’re not maybe pulled in as quickly as they should be.

[00:36:51] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It gets, um, I’ve seen too many partners, uh. Scale a bad process. Yeah. And so they have a really, like, they have a really, like a, a, a process that’s meant for, um, you know, five deals a month and then there’s scale to 50 deals a month, and they try to use the same process and that that just doesn’t work.

[00:37:10] Reis Barrie: Um, ’cause it just amplifies all the flaws that the process had in the first place, um, with lack of process, uh, in the first place. And so, um, and frankly like the, that’s the, those are the foundations that everything gets built off of. And so this operational. Um, this operational backbone of how are we managing the partnership?

[00:37:29] Reis Barrie: How are we making sure that we’re, you know, if there’s 30 things we have to look across over the course of the year, how do we make sure that we have rhythms built in the business where, you know, somebody is accountable and owning that component. Yeah. Um, how do we make sure that we have, um, the right.

[00:37:45] Reis Barrie: Things built into our serum system to be able to pull, pull accurate data in terms of like what we actually want to co-sell on. Um, and so we wanna make sure we have all these kind of, these operational backbones and rhythms built so that when we do scale from five to 50 to a hundred to whatever the number may be, um, that the process can scale with us and it’s gonna evolve over time.

[00:38:07] Reis Barrie: But ultimately, like. Uh, we wanna make sure that it’s, it’s a front of mind thing that we’re actually Yeah. Looking at.

[00:38:13] Vince Menzione: So get rev ops involved early.

[00:38:15] Reis Barrie: Yeah.

[00:38:15] Vince Menzione: Rev ops is a huge component, a huge part. Getting, get ’em in, integrated into your process. Uh, c you mentioned CRM system. You’ve got a, you’ve got a. Kind of break your CRM solution to support the partner Yeah.

[00:38:27] Vince Menzione: Org. And there’s a lot of that that needs to then go into partner center that you Yeah. You help organizations through, but you really gotta get that rev ops piece. Yeah. The s and, and two

[00:38:36] Reis Barrie: factors too. Not only, uh, not deal, not only deal sharing, but also, uh, uh, private offer management as well. Yeah, exactly.

[00:38:43] Reis Barrie: And so they have to, they have to be able to manage both. So such a big component. If you can, if you can sell a hundred deals and you can cost a hundred deals, that’s, that’s one thing. But if you can’t, if you, if you have no process to actually share the private offers, that’s a totally different problem.

[00:38:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So we want to, we need to make sure we’re building both in parallel

[00:38:59] Vince Menzione: and we’re not gonna get into the whole marketplace dynamics here, but it’s super important that you understand that these organizations are sometimes burning down their commitment, which means you need to get rev ops involved in that process so that they can properly burn down the commitments.

[00:39:14] Vince Menzione: And attribute it and so on. So that’s part of the rev ops components of it as well.

[00:39:19] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Yeah. And it just, the reading the stat, these 80% of enterprise companies are buying through, like through marketplaces right now. Yeah. And so this is like a, yeah. Um. It is quickly becoming a a, it is quickly becoming and will continue, I think, to become a customer preference in many, in many cases.

[00:39:37] Reis Barrie: And so

[00:39:38] Vince Menzione: I love it. ’cause two years ago nobody was talking about it. I know. We, we, we started talking about it at our events and trying to encourage organizations to go this route. So it’s so, it’s so great to see. It is really cool. It’s, yeah, it,

[00:39:48] Reis Barrie: it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, we get to watch like kind of, uh, from a different perspective.

[00:39:53] Reis Barrie: A, it’s crazy. A lot of people kind of jump in either midstream, but seeing, seeing how things play out over a period of, um, you know, multiple years. Yeah. Um, is always, it’s just an interesting perspective. So like. To look at things about. It’s ’cause we’re

[00:40:04] Vince Menzione: on a rocket ship. It’s a crazy, crazy time in our industry and we are on a rocket ship.

[00:40:09] Vince Menzione: So this last one is near and dear to my heart as well. Right. So you talk about the feedback loop, the communication loop, we always talk about communications almost being like the eighth principle of successful partnering. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We’ve talked about it. In fact, super important. One of the articles we wrote, it actually was in their communications being important.

[00:40:25] Vince Menzione: What happens when partners fail to build good communication loops or feedback loops with Microsoft?

[00:40:32] Reis Barrie: It just, uh, the quick answer is just they go, the partnership goes stagnant. Yeah. Um, goes to hell on am starts. Yeah, it does. It starts to stall out. Yeah. But like, uh, uh, it’s a funny, it’s a funny concept ’cause even the word partnership like implies deep communication, deep feedback loops, like working in, working in partnership with each other.

[00:40:54] Reis Barrie: And so like, it’s, it’s naturally just implied in the term that we’re talking about. Um, but so many times I see, like, I just, I see the, uh. The partner who is like dying to become a managed partner, got like, got the PDM, did the whole thing, and then like now it’s, uh, you know, oh, I can’t make, I can’t make this call, I can’t make this call.

[00:41:13] Reis Barrie: I can’t make this call. I’m just like, okay. Like that’s not good. This is, this is, this is the start of the end right here. Yeah. Because the moment you start to deprioritize, like the rhythms and the communication and the feedback loops, um. Things go south really fast because your ROB,

[00:41:29] Vince Menzione: your rhythm of the business.

[00:41:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah. By the way, if you, that’s a big Microsoft term. Huge one. Huge one. And I, you know, we, we’ve, we’ve talked about it before this, the whole idea about like having a very strong rhythm, rhythm of your business with Microsoft. Yeah. This is so critical to success. I talked about the Kumbaya meetings, right?

[00:41:47] Vince Menzione: We’d have, we’d have these big meetings. PowerPoint slides, executives lining up on both sides of the table. Yep. We all like high five each other at the end. I’ve crickets. And then of those, and then crickets, nothing happens. That is su such a recipe for failure, as you say in number 12 here, not not having a feedback loop.

[00:42:04] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Yeah. So no feedback loop and the rhythm of the business. I can’t, I can’t emphasize that enough because that’s

[00:42:09] Vince Menzione: so what’s a good rhythm? Is it a monthly call? Is it.

[00:42:12] Reis Barrie: Um, let’s see. It depends on who you can, who you can, who you can plug in with. But if you have a PDM, then weekly or biweekly, frankly, is, is a great, great cadence.

[00:42:22] Reis Barrie: Um, talking through, um, pipeline incentives, uh, upcoming events. Upcoming what upcoming. Programmatic shifts and things like that, making sure we’re staying, uh, in pace. Um, some partners are part of different, like partner councils, which are great feedback loops as well, uh, to be able to influence whether that’s solution areas or marketplace or partner center.

[00:42:43] Reis Barrie: And there’s different partner councils as well. So we can, if you can work your, say you work your way into one of those, like those are honestly great feedback loops, uh, as well. Um, but again, like it’s, uh, it’s a, um. You gotta show up. Yeah. Um, I love it. It’s, you gotta show up. I’ve, I, I harp on this because I see it, so I see it so often where you want it, like, partners wanted something so bad now that they, now that they have it, like it’s, it’s now we’re, we’re starting to get complacent in certain areas and it comes back kind of to that, uh, I think number two, which was having owner.

[00:43:16] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, and so. I’ve also seen organizations where they have like an owner, but the owner also manages, you know, eight other partnerships within the company and, and can’t give enough time to this particular one. Or misses meetings ’cause it’s, you know, during a month or at events and, and, and different conferences and whatnot.

[00:43:34] Reis Barrie: And you know, don’t talk to Microsoft for a month. It’s long time not talk to your partner.

[00:43:39] Vince Menzione: Reese, this is so valuable. Again, I’m gonna tell you all, go back, rewind this. If you’re on YouTube, you just move that little bar back and hit play again. But it’s expecting Microsoft to send you leads. It’s no, that’s number one.

[00:43:53] Vince Menzione: It’s no owner for Microsoft Partnership. Number two. Misaligning compensation models. Three. Finance isn’t ready. Number four, weak Microsoft specific messaging. Number five, certification as a logo. Number six. Mm-hmm. No one not having a one page partner Plan number seven, not sharing referrals in partner center.

[00:44:12] Vince Menzione: Number eight. Not treating, uh, or treating all deals as co-sell deals. Number nine, underusing rewards and incentives. Number 10. Scaling without ops ready, being ops ready, number 11 and no feedback loop with Microsoft. Number 12. Yeah, Reese, you just hit the nail on the head, man. This is incredible.

[00:44:31] Reis Barrie: Awesome.

[00:44:31] Reis Barrie: It’s, yeah, all my passion. Yeah, so I love talking through these. I, I love talking through these and if

[00:44:35] Vince Menzione: you’re lazy or if you really want to get. Deep in this come to our event October 27th through the 29th Reston, Virginia. It is not a public sector event, by the way. I just wanna be clear on this. ’cause a lot of people said, oh, you’re doing a public sector event?

[00:44:49] Vince Menzione: No. Mm-hmm. Just, we picked the East Coast location being Washington, DC Yeah. Reese is gonna be doing an incredible workshop. Yeah. His workshops are usually sold out, standing room only. He’ll be, he’ll be on stage with us as well at this event. We’ve got some incredible leaders from Microsoft. We also have AWS in the room and some other organizations, some incredible partner sponsors, and also other sponsors, technology sponsors there.

[00:45:15] Vince Menzione: I think there’s 23 sponsors actually for this event. Oh, that’s incredible. Yeah, it is incredible. And this will be another incredible event. We will be live streaming if you can’t make it, but we want you in the room. You’re gonna be elbow to elbow with leaders like Reese. You’re gonna learn from executives, from Microsoft, as well as other partners that have gotten it right, working with the tech giant.

[00:45:34] Vince Menzione: But you’re gonna learn more and the immersion is incredible. I hear it all the time from our events. So we hope to see you in Reston, Virginia, October 27th to the 29th. Reese, so great to have you back here.

[00:45:45] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so great to be here. I look forward to seeing, seeing you in Reston. Yes. Seeing everyone else in Reston as well.

[00:45:50] Reis Barrie: Doing those workshops is like one of my favorite things, Frank. Yeah, it’s

[00:45:53] Vince Menzione: gonna be awesome. And then we have some other things we’re gonna be talking about, uh, probably in Reston you’re gonna hear more about what’s gonna happen here in Boca. And we have a couple other things that are going on that we will share.

[00:46:04] Vince Menzione: It’s kind of under the covers right now. So you gotta come, you gotta come see us all and you’ll learn firsthand what’s happening in the world of Ultimate partner. Thank you so much for watching, listening, and supporting the ultimate Guide to partnering. Thank you.