Bold Journeys Podcast

Just as online shopping and review sites have changed the way we buy at home, the technology buyer’s journey has also seen massive change. The shift from products to services, new ways technologies are sold and delivered to the market, and the focus on customer experience are having a profound impact on both buyers and sellers. Channel success requires we re-examine the buyer’s journey. 

I did just that with Jason Bystrak, VP of the Cloud Business Unit at D&H Distributing and member of CompTIA’s Channel Advisory Board. Jason shares the work he and the Advisory Board completed on the buyer’s journey and the role of the channel (partners, distributors, and vendors) in that journey. 

The technology buyer’s journey can be broken into four main stages. Each stage presents an opportunity for the partner, distributor, and vendor to influence the buying decision. 

From a culture standpoint, these line of business leaders that are often involved with the decisions, they don't want to be sold to. You really need to focus on how you educate them rather than how to sell to them. @jbystrak
Share on X

It's no longer about the technology or the bells and whistles, it's about the business outcome. @jbystrak
Share on X

The role of the vendor is making sure that throughout the service consumption, they're able to provide key performance indicators for their specific products as to what's being used. @jbystrak
Share on X

There’s a lot of complexity to building a successful marketing strategy. One of the biggest challenges is that partners have all levels of marketing expertise. Some partners are even better at marketing than their vendors. But many more have limited capabilities, and some have none at all. Most have a deep desire to do good marketing, even if they don’t know how and lack the infrastructure to do it.

This week I spoke to both Tricia Atchison and David Pereira to learn how they help partners become successful marketers. Trisha Atchison is the Worldwide Director of Channel Marketing and Enablement at Citrix. David Pereira is the founder and president of Get Lift, a full service B2B marketing agency. David worked with Trisha to create KickStart, a program designed to help partners create and execute the most effective route to pipeline creation and sales growth. The program won Sirius Decisions’ Channel Marketing Program of the Year award.  

Citrix’s Kickstart Channel Marketing program has five core components that enables their partners to execute an integrated marketing strategy.

Content is king. The foundation of an award-winning program is having great content for partners.  

Planning is something many marketing programs don’t focus on enough. This includes joint business planning and creating quarterly or six-month marketing plans.

Find ways to make it easier for your partners to access marketing funds. Citrix integrated funding into the marketing planning process to fund a series of campaigns rather than a single activity or event.

Because Partners have different levels of marketing resources and infrastructure, they need varying levels of support. Citrix solves this by offering marketing agency support where the agency executes on the partners’ behalf. This provides more consistent execution and tracking of results. 

Enablement is a foundation for success, and not just partner enablement. First you need to enable your partner managers on your marketing program, what it means for partners, and the ideal profile of partners who can benefit most from it.  

The first key to a successful Channel Marketing program is content because content is king. @tricia_atchison
Share on X

Sometimes you just have to be willing to put yourself out there, be bold, and not be afraid that it may not work perfectly the first time out the gate. @tricia_atchison
Share on X

We talk about changes in the channel often, but a huge one I have seen take place over the years is the switch from the traditional reseller model to the Managed Service Provider (MSP) model. Partners have transformed their business models from one-time product and service sales into recurring-revenue contract-based services. MSPs combine white label cloud offerings from multiple vendors with their own services IP into a packaged service. 

This week I spoke with a channel pro who knows a thing or two about MSPs. Rob Rae is the VP of Business Development at Datto, a cloud backup and disaster recovery vendor who has gone all in on MSPs. We discuss the story of Datto and their 100% MSP channel success. Rob shares why he is fine not knowing who his end users are. Learn his secrets to finding, engaging, and inspiring MSPs.

It's no longer about free products or discounts. That's not how the channel works these days. It's about how much recurring revenue you're going to make for them. @RobTRae
Share on X

All I'm doing is providing the wrench, the tool that the MSP needs in order to perform their services. @RobTRae
Share on X

In this age of exponential growth and innovation, we are all at risk of being disrupted by new competitors and new business models. Yet most of us are driving into the future spending more time looking through the rearview mirror than through the windshield. But what if you could anticipate the future? What kind of partner program would you develop? What kind of partners would you recruit? What kind of competitive edge would that give you? 

This week’s guest, Daniel Burrus, is a technology futurist, best-selling author of The Anticipatory Organization, and founder of Burrus Research. I have a fascinating conversation with Daniel as he shares how you can predict the future by studying and categorizing trends. Learn how you can create an anticipatory channel organization that will enable you to disrupt instead of being disrupted.

Anytime you can see a disruption before it disrupts, anytime you can see change before the change hits, you can use that to your advantage. @DanielBurrus
Share on X

The beauty of a soft trend is if you don't like it, you can influence it. And the advantage of a hard trend is you can see it coming, and that lets you parent change into opportunity. @DanielBurrus
Share on X

Unplug from the present, the crisis you're managing, the deal you're trying to cut, and instead plug into your future. Why? It's where you're going to spend the rest of your life. @DanielBurrus
Share on X

If it can be done, it will be done. If you don't do it, someone else will. The risk now is not doing it. @DanielBurrus
Share on X

I feel very fortunate to have such great channel talent on this podcast. It’s hard to keep up with all of the invaluable tips provided by my guests, who collectively represent centuries of channel experience.  In this episode, I highlight my top 10 channel tips from the first 10 episodes.  

When you think about how your customers want to buy and who the customer is talking with throughout the buyers journey, you're going to see that they touch a lot of organizations that could be potential partners for you. - Rob Spee
Share on X

Partners are learning that the real money is in specialization. They want to create their own intellectual property, they want to add true business value. - Rob Spee
Share on X