Bold Journeys Podcast

After years of non-stop growth and massive hiring by the big tech companies, we’re suddenly seeing large-scale layoffs. Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce together have announced 29,000 people being let go in just the past 3 months. What impact will this have on your channel career? What impact with it have on your partners? Jay McBain, Chief Channel Analyst at Canalys, shares how to turbocharge your channel career and thrive in this new brave world of layoffs and massive channel transformation.

Here are 10 things I learned from Jay about how to navigate your channel career in 2023:

It’s the last week of 2022 and time to take a break from the channel.  In this Christmas special episode, I share the story of my sailing adventure in the US and Spanish Virgin Islands. This time I’m on a 40′ catamaran with three sailing buddies to explore the islands and teach ourselves how to sail a cat. Hear the joys and risks of sailing during hurricane season and what we learn on our first bareboat catamaran charter. 

Go-to-market strategies keep evolving, but one thing that hasn’t gone away is the ever present challenge of channel conflict. This is especially true in regions or market segments where you co-sell with your partners. How do you get your own reps to give up control in exchange for the powerful returns partners can bring? Rich Blakeman, author of The Hybrid Sales Channel, shares how to drive revenue and profits through a sales methodology that reduces conflict and leverages the unique strengths of direct and channel sales.

Here are 5 things I learned from Rich about effective co-selling with partners:

There’s no doubt that customers are increasingly making their technology purchases on B2B marketplaces. I wrote about the impact of this shift recently in my blog on Channel Predictions: 2023 and Beyond. To learn why marketplaces are gaining so much steam and how ISVs and partners can take advantage of this shift, I turned to Felipe Conill, WW Leader, AWS Emerging Security and David Manks, VP of Alliances at BeyondTrust.  Felipe and David share how to get listed and then win on the AWS Marketplace.

Here are 10 things I learned from Felipe and David about the AWS Marketplace:

One challenge channel managers still face is finding time to sit down with partners and develop proper business plans. But it’s not just an issue of time. Channel managers struggle with the skills needed to talk about business goals, document goals and action plans with their partners, and effectively meet to review progress.

To address this challenge, I dusted off the first episode of the Channel Journeys podcast. My guest is Gary Morris, founder and CEO of Successful Channels, who developed an innovative solution to a classic problem – how to increase the performance of channel managers.