Bold Journeys Podcast

By Rob SpeeReligion & Spirituality Education Self-Improvement Religion

Bold Journeys Podcast episodes

May 22, 2019Jeff Mattan: How to transition to a SaaS Partner Program
Valuable tips for moving from a traditional channel model to a SaaS Partner Program
Transitioning the channel to the cloud and SaaS subscriptions is still a massive challenge. This week’s episode features Jeff Mattan, a channel veteran who has extensive experience in this channel transformation. Over the course of his channel careers, Jeff has worked with telco agents, MSPs, and IT Solution Providers as a supplier of telco services, networking, and now security solutions.
We talk about channel convergence, the pros and cons of different channel models, and how SaaS vendors can reduce partner disruption. And Jeff provides valuable tips on how to develop a SaaS Partner Program that will attract the right partners who provide the right services to drive greater customer success and accelerate revenue growth.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
SaaS Partner Program Tips
For SaaS companies selling directly to customers and paying a monthly recurring commission to the partner who makes the sale fits very well with telco agents who are used to that model. However, it is a massive disruption to most MSPs and Resellers who are used to billing the customer. They want the control of owning the customer and are reluctant to accept the referral-for-commission model.
The downside or limitation of the agent model is that agents aren’t staffed or equipped to do product adoption and integrations services that will increase customer success and reduce churn.
Adding a channel model where the partner can do the billing will open the doors to MSPs and Resellers who can provide additional services and integrations.
The subscription model is still a change for the traditional reseller used to selling large deals. Show them that you understand the cashflow struggle of moving from a large transaction perpetual license to smaller transaction subscription model.
Paying the partner in perpetuity on a subscription may seem expensive and unwarranted, but you have to match what your competitors are doing or you’re going to lose your partners. Instead, look at your sales process and make it easier to buy your product to reduce costs.
Other Partner Program Tips
If you have a tier-based Partner Program, promote partners to higher tier at least every quarter instead of waiting to end of year, otherwise partners may hold deals until next year to get the added benefits of higher tier.
Be incredibly honest with partners about what types of products and services will be profitable for the partner and which won’t. Let them know it’s not just you or them, the whole market is shifting.
When building your program, lay out the entire customer journey, from influence and buying to provisioning and implementing. Break it into stages to find what’s valuable, who can do it, can the partner make money doing it. Could give you room to reduce residuals if partner can make more money on the services around your product.
Depending on your product and target customer, consider adding a referral program, a residual commission program, and a reseller program to your Partner Program to offer the most flexibility and attractiveness to a wide variety of partner types.
It takes a lot of work to develop a comprehensive Partner Program that is at the same time simple for the partner and makes you easy to work with. But all that upfront work will be worth it.
Reevaluate your partner program in relationship to the customer journey and your channel’s role at least once a year.
You have to really spend time and energy in hand-to-hand relationships with your clients to ask the hard questions and make sure that what you’re hearing is genuine interest that translates into a path to creating economic value for that audience and revenue for your company.
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There are places today where you (the partner) can make money, but they are not where you are today. So you need to reinvest- @jeffmattan
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The supplier needs to be flexible in setting up a Partner Program that has different elements to drive different behaviors with different of partners - @robspee
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When it comes to Partner Program design, spend time on planning. Whiteboard the entire customer journey. Segment it. Determine where partners can add services and make money. The design program around that. @jeffmattan
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LINKS & RESOURCES
Follow Jeff on Twitter and LinkedIn
Read Rob’s blog on Why Channel Convergence Won’t Happen
The post Jeff Mattan: How to transition to a SaaS Partner Program first appeared on Channel Journeys.
41 min
May 21, 2019 Jeff Mattan: How to transition to a SaaS Partner Program – CJ21
This episode features Jeff Mattan, a channel veteran who has extensive experience in transitioning channel partners to the cloud and SaaS subscriptions. Jeff provides valuable tips on how to build a SaaS Partner Program that will attract the right partners to drive greater customer success and accelerate revenue growth.
41 min
May 15, 2019 Introducing the Channel Journeys Podcast
Channel Journeys Podcast on a Mission to Inspire and Empower Channel Professionals CJ20. After 19 episodes of the Channel Journeys Podcast, I’m going solo and taking a leap back to introduce you to the show. Instead of interviewing a guest, I share my own channel journey and why I’m so passionate about the channel. Learn […]
15 min
May 14, 2019 Rob Spee: Introducing the Channel Journeys Podcast - CJ20
After 19 episodes of Channel Journeys, I'm going solo and taking a leap back to introduce you to the show. Instead of interviewing a guest, I share my own channel journey and why I'm so passionate about the channel. Learn how I got hooked on podcasts, why I launched Channel Journeys, and what you can expect from future episodes. My short and long-term goal is to make Channel Journeys the best channel podcast in the world.
15 min
May 13, 2019Rob Spee: Introducing the Channel Journeys Podcast
Rob shares why he launched the Channel Journey Podcast and plans for the future

After 19 episodes of Channel Journeys, I’m going solo and taking a leap back to introduce you to the show. Instead of interviewing a guest, I share my own channel journey and why I’m so passionate about the channel. Learn how I got hooked on podcasts, why I launched Channel Journeys, and what you can expect from future episodes. Hear my plans to make Channel Journeys the best channel podcast in the world
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Rob’s goal with the Channel Journeys podcast is share his own channel knowledge, promote the channel, learn from other channel professionals, and create a sense of community.
Rob’ podcast mission is to elevate the channel profession by educating, inspiring and empowering channel professionals to exceed what they may think is barely possible to achieve.
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There's so much more that we could be doing in the channel if we have the right tools, the right people, the right technology, and we stay abreast of all the changes that are taking place. - Rob Spee
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LINKS & RESOURCES
Follow Rob on Twitter and LinkedIn
The post Rob Spee: Introducing the Channel Journeys Podcast first appeared on Channel Journeys.
15 min
May 08, 2019Bob Moore: How to Share Data to Drive Channel Partner Success
Solving the Partner Prisoner’s Dilemma to Drive Partner Success
One of the biggest sales frustrations, for both the partner and the vendor, is when there’s a lack of cooperation in sharing account data. This episode features Bob Moore, a serial entrepreneur, CEO, and Co-Founder of Crossbeam. Bob is on a mission to help companies that are partnered with each other bring shared data into their conversations to drive partner success.
Bob shares what he calls the Partner Prisoner’s dilemma, the all too familiar situation where vendor reps and partner reps don’t want to share sales information. And we talk about a big lesson that Bob learned at his prior startup, RJ Metrics, around product market fit. He’s applying that lesson at Crossbeam and tells why anyone starting a company or thinking of launching a product needs to focus on this too.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Partner Prisoner’s Dilemma
Crossbeam solves the “Partner Prisoner’s Dilemma” where both the vendor and the partner don’t share information because they see it as too risky. Yet if they would cooperate, both parties would have a much more successful outcome.
The benefit of cooperation is in the overlap between the vendors accounts and prospects, and the partners’ accounts and prospects. But if vendor and partners are holding back their data, you can’t draw that Venn diagram.
Partner success is at the intersection of vendor and partner accounts
Big Shift in the Channel
• The maturity of the API economy has transformed software integrations. What used to be hard and required an Accenture to get the project done, is now easy.
• SasS, combined with APIs, is pushing a shift from the traditional reseller/system integrator channel model to technology partner programs.
• The challenge is how to extract revenue influence from these partnerships. Crossbeam is helping companies leverage their integrations by finding co-selling and co-marketing opportunities that are force multipliers.
Bob’s Big Lesson
Raised about $25M in venture capital and grew his prior company, RJMetrics, to about 150 people before selling the company to Magento.
Initial growth period was fun, but growth can catch up on you. Had huge success selling RJMetrics for eCommerce, so thought they could bring it into education, tech companies and other verticals.
Learned that you can build an awesome product that does cool things, and there can be a huge market you’re going after, but if you don’t product market fit, the overlap between your product and the market, you’re not going to win.
Look for BIG overlap for Product Market Fit
You have to really spend time and energy in hand-to-hand relationships with your clients to ask the hard questions and make sure that what you’re hearing is genuine interest that translates into a path to creating economic value for that audience and revenue for your company.
The Crossbeam Solution
Crossbeam is a SaaS solution that allows two companies to share sales, account, prospect, and other data in a safe and secure way to create more value.
Crossbeam serves as a data escrow service that provides a secure SOC2, GDPR compliant relationship between both companies. This gives an environment where you can combine the data from a variety of sources, find the overlap, and never have to worry about the underlying raw data that doesn’t overlap being exposed. And that unlocks a whole new world.
Has a network effect in that the more vendors and partners who use it, the greater value all parties get from the solution.
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The universe of interconnectivity between products has exploded in the last decade and even more so in the last handful of years - @robertjmoore
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You can build an awesome product that does a lot of cool things. And you can identify a really, really big market to go after. But where you find opportunity in a startup is at the intersection of those things - @robertjmoore
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The observation from SasS and the maturity of the API economy is that legacy channels are being replace by new technology partner programs - @robertjmoore
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LINKS & RESOURCES
Follow Bob on Twitter and LinkedIn
Learn more about Crossbeam
Relentless.com
The Partner Prisoner’s Dilemma
How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit
The post Bob Moore: How to Share Data to Drive Channel Partner Success first appeared on Channel Journeys.
46 min
May 08, 2019 Bob Moore: How to Share Data to Drive Channel Partner Success - CJ19
This episode features Bob Moore, CEO and Co-Founder of Crossbeam. Bob is on a mission to help companies who are partnered with each other bring shared data into their conversations to drive partner success. Learn how to solve the Partner Prisoner's Dilemma where vendors and partner don't want to share account information. And hear the big lesson Bob learned about product market fit and why anyone starting a company or thinking of launching a product needs to focus on this too.
46 min
May 01, 2019Sunir Shah: 5 Reasons You Need SaaS Channels
Why SaaS Channels are Vital to SaaS Growth
This episode on SaaS Channels features Sunir Shah, founder of three SaaS organizations. He has his own SaaS company, AppBind. He runs the SaaS Connect conference. And he founded the Cloud Software Association, a network of over 2,000 companies building the market and channel for cloud software distribution.
The subscription model of SaaS has driven many SaaS companies to only sell direct. Sunir has a depth of SaaS business development expertise. Sunir provides 5 big reasons why SaaS channels are so important for the success of SaaS companies and when to build them. And he tells us what he’s doing with his company AppBind to make it easier for SaaS Channel partners to buy and manage multiple SaaS subscriptions they sell as part of their bundled service to their clients.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
SaaS Connect
SaaS Connect is a meeting-central event. Over 300 SaaS partners, vendors, investors, and other leaders convene to learn best practices and form new partnerships. The event is designed to meet everyone and build a network you can carry forward.
Why We Need SaaS Channels
Integrations and open APIs were once seen as a crazy idea, just as some today think SaaS channels and partnerships is a crazy idea. Today, the majority of SaaS is sold direct. However, you can’t expect to own the entire customer experience or reach every customer in the world.
SaaS growth is being limited by a lack of SaaS channels. While Gartner predicts SaaS revenues to reach $85 billion in 2019, Microsoft’s revenue alone is over $100B. The big difference is that Microsoft is channel-driven and very proud that for every $1 Microsoft makes their partners make $10, and they generate more than 95 percent of our business through their partner ecosystem.
The biggest problem threatening SaaS growth is that most SaaS investors and CEOs still want to control the customer from beginning to end, and they see partners as a threat.
SaaS adoption is key to reducing churn, yet most SaaS companies attempt to handle the customer experience on their own, or compete with their partners in providing on-boarding and adoption services. In contrast, one CEO took a giant step in supporting his SaaS channel by eliminating the company’s Customer Success team and putting 90% of the on-boarding role in the hands of their partners.
The SaaS Growth Ceiling is when the number of customers your acquiring every month equals the number of customers who are turning away every month. And it’s a trap. Because no matter how hard you work, you will always stay at the same place or start declining. One way out of the Growth Ceiling is to grow customer acquisition exponentially through SaaS channels.
Source: The SaaS growth ceiling: what happens when churn takes hold by ChartMogel
Building SaaS Channels
The SaaS partner ecosystem depends on your offering. It may include a developer network, a service network, and a network of commercial channel partners depending on where you fit.
With SaaS, you must generate customer demand for your product first before your channel partner will sell it.
Focus on making sure that customers like your product, work on your direct sales, messaging, marketing, and building product market fit. Make enough case studies and proof that your thing is working, then you can start to build up your SaaS channels.
Solving a SaaS Challenge with AppBind
Software has always been a partnership play. One piece of software can’t solve an entire business problem. That is why partners play a key role in integrating and bundling multiple offerings. They add their own IP to provide a service that solves customer’s business problems.
AppBind solves the billing challenge partners face when combining multiple SaaS products into a bundled service. For example, with AppBind, a social marketing agency can buy SaaS subscriptions for a social media scheduler, advertising, dashboards, buffer accounts, etc. , mark them up, and sell them as part of a bundled service to clients, and manage all the subscriptions in one place.
With AppBind, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can control all of their SaaS subscriptions, many with different billing metrics, that make up their service offerings.
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You can't own the entire customer experience. You need to develop an ecosystem of partners around you because you can't phone and email every customer in the world. - @Sunir
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The channel is the most important future development we need to build in order to get SaaS to grow. - @Sunir
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The biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest problem absolutely, is that most SaaS investors and CEOs still want to control the customer from beginning to end and they see partners as a threat. - @Sunir
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The predictable part of SaaS predictable revenue is that it will hit a ceiling and then you're stuck. So what's your next leverage? It’s the channel. - @Sunir
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LINKS & RESOURCES
Follow Sunir on LinkedIn and Twitter
Learn more about AppBind
Join the Cloud Software Association
Learn more about SaaS Connect
Read Rob’s 4 SaaS Channel Takeaways from SaaS Connect
The post Sunir Shah: 5 Reasons You Need SaaS Channels first appeared on Channel Journeys.
45 min
May 01, 2019 Sunir Shah: Why SaaS Channels are Vital to SaaS Growth - CJ18
This episode on the SaaS Channel features Sunir Shah, founder of three SaaS organizations. The subscription model of SaaS has driven many SaaS companies to only sell direct. With a depth of SaaS business development expertise, Sunir describes why partnerships are so important for the success of SaaS companies and what he's doing to make it easier for SaaS Channel partners to buy and manage multiple SaaS subscriptions.
45 min
April 24, 2019Craig Schlagbaum: Driving Sales and Channel Convergence
How to accelerate growth using Agents and Managed service providers
This episode features Craig Schlagbaum, Vice President of Indirect Channels for the business solutions side of Comcast. Craig is an industry veteran and decorated channel chief. He shares why the telecom agent model has been so successful, but why MSPs are vital to his channel growth. And Craig tells how the agent and MSP worlds are colliding in a channel convergence. Along the way you’ll learn Craig’s secrets to success with tips you can leverage to take your channel business and your channel career to the next level.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Under the Telco partner model, Agents and MSPs get the benefit of residual commissions for life of a customer from an asset-less income stream; they don’t own asset or pay debt on it. Many SaaS companies are replicating this model.
The Master Agent is a distributor of services. They provide credit to their agents who can’t wait for residual stream in the form of an advance on commissions.
The key difference between the telco partner program and traditional ISV partner program is the financial model. Both channels look see ease of doing business, from quote to cash, as top priority.
Most of Craig’s partners are not interested in the reseller model where the partner bills the customer. Craig says they’ve proven wrong the idea that you must bill the customer to own the customer. Agents control the customer even though Comcast bills the customer directly.
Craig sees a channel convergence of the Agent and MSP business models. He says MSPs could end up with 3 revenue streams;
Revenue from services they bill on their own paper for a service that they created,
Residual commissions for services from other providers, and
Revenue from the heavy lifting of integration and support services.
Comcast’s secret sauce is how much emphasis they put on ease of doing business and sales operations. Craig calls this focus on Partner Experience PX19. Under PX19, they track key metrics including sales per month, churn rates, how long it takes Comcast to get partners a quote, get their customers installed, and get commissions paid.
SHOW NOTES
The AGent Model
[4:00] Telco companies traditionally sold directly so they don’t have the channel participation rates you see with many IT vendors like Cisco and Microsoft. But Comcast’s partner business is in the double digits and growing at more than 20% per year.
[5:45] Comcast has thousands of partners. Most, around 80%, are agents, acting like independent insurance agents or financial brokers. But fastest growing segment are MSPs who control end-to-end network and software and get benefit of residual income for life of customers.
[8:00] MSPs get benefit of residual income for life of customer from an asset-less income stream; they don’t own asset or pay debt on it.
[10:00] The Master Agent is a distributor of services. Provide credit to their agents who can’t wait for residual stream in the form of an advance on commissions.
Channel Convergence
[10:00] The telco agent financial model with a residual commission is a blueprint that is being used by SaaS companies.
[13:00] Telcos and SaaS firms are both looking to MSPs who can offer solution consisting of multiple providers and offer greater level of service to their customers.
[16:00] The more the telcos offerings move up market from commodity voice to complex data services like SDN, the more MSPs and VARs will need to be involved to support customers, driving more channel convergence.
[17:00] Key differences in telco partner program is the financial model. Main thing his channel looks for is ease of doing business from quote to cash, no different that ISV partners. Provide online tools for partners to see what customers are doing with the products.
The Secret Sauce
[18:00] Comcast’s secret sauce is how much emphasis they put on ease of doing business and sales operations.
[19:00] Key partner metrics he tracks are sales per month, churn rates, how long it takes Comcast to get partner’s a quote, get their customers installed, and get commissions paid.
[21:00] Has both a field and an inside channel team of about 40 people supporting thousands of partners, supported by sales engineers and specialized SDN team, and an ops team that support the master agents and distributors.
[23:00] Envisions a portion of the 100,000+ MSPs moving to selling telco services. Some MSPs are getting their in a more clandestine way. MSPs partner with agents under their own agreed to terms. MSPs could end up with 3 revenue streams; revenue from services they built, revenue from residual commissions for services from other providers, and revenue from the heavy lifting of integration services.
[25:00] Barriers to entry that VARs used to face doesn’t exist for the millennial world today. You don’t have to put up any cash to start representing hundreds of services with residual commissions.
[28:00] Most of his partners are not interested in the reseller model where partner bills the customer. Craig says they’ve proven wrong the idea that you must bill the customer to own the customer. Agents control the customer even though the billing is done by Comcast.
[31:30] Secrets to Craig’s success is always putting the partner first, seeing the partner as the customer, and improving the partner experience. Logs over 100,000 miles per year on getting out to see partners.
[34:00] It took 2 or 3 years to get executives fully on board with channel strategy. It took Craig acting as a chief culture officer to get their support. You have to be patient, but over time the channel will win out.
[38:30] Craig got into the channel business because his father was in it. His dad helped start the channel at IBM in the early 1980s.
LINKS & RESOURCES
Find Craig on LinkedIn and Twitter
Learn more about the Comcast Partner Program and Partner Experience PX19
Read Rob’s take on Channel Convergence
The post Craig Schlagbaum: Driving Sales and Channel Convergence first appeared on Channel Journeys.
49 min