How do you build a channel team to support and drive explosive channel growth? Ally Murtlow, Director of National Channel Sales at Dialpad, shares how they grew their channel team by over 400% to manage and drive their channel bookings that are growing 150% year over year.

Signing a new partner is often celebrated with great fanfare, but driving successful engagment is the real challenge for most partner managers. Daniel Graff-Radford, CEO of the PRM company Allbound, discusses a study of partner portal engagement and key indicators of successful partners.     

Allbound observed their software users’ behaviors and tracked their portal sessions for 12 weeks to discern which types of portal behavior noticeably impacted future engagement rates. Here are three of their observations:

This is the story of my sailing adventure in the summer of 2021 from Bermuda to New York. I’m out on the high seas once again with my sailing hero, Tania Abei, the author of Maiden Voyage, and 4 other crew I’ve never met before. We’ve got 800 miles of open ocean and a Berudua High to cross, giving us plenty of time to get to know each other. My trip is filled with drama and uncertainty, and that’s before I even get to the boat!

We’ve all heard how the global pandemic has accelerated cloud adoption. Analysts report that 90% of enterprises with over 1000 employees and 50% of government agencies use the cloud. But why are some partners and customers still hesitant to make the shift?

In this episode, I’m speaking with Lana King, VP of Partner Programs, Training and Enablement at Mitel. Lana shares why some organizations are still relectant to embrace the cloud. Learn how Mitel is helping partners and their customers adopt the cloud business model through their unique partner managed program that allows partners to retain control of their customers while meeting Mitel’s business goals.  

Here are the top things I learned from Lana about setting up a program to drive cloud adoption – many of these apply to achieving any objective through the channel.

What do partners want more than discounts and rebates? That’s the question I posed to Balaji Subramanian, SVP and Global Channel Chief at Igel. Before this interview, I didn’t know much about this successful edge computing company. They have a very interesting channel story of transformation.

Igel launched 21 years ago as a hardware company with a 100% channel, traditional 2-tier model with distributors and VARs. As they transitioned to being being a software company, they added System Integrators and MSPs to their partner ecosystem. And now they are moving to the SaaS subscription model.

Balaji stepped in as Igel’s channel chief one year ago and is modernizing their partner program to align with their new go to market model. One of the areas he’s focused on are partner incentives. Taking advice from his Partner Advisory Council, he’s replacing traditional back-end rebates with bespoke investments to help his partners drive more land, adopt, and expand motions in their customers’ journey.

Here are the top 5 things I learned from Balaji about partner incetives:

There’s a wide range of partners and influencers who can help you find and win new customers. The trick is finding what motivates them to recommend your solution. Learn how Chris Westfall, VP Channels and Alliances at Paylocity, built a partner referral program with creative non-cash rewards to drive partner sourced business.

Here are the top 5 things I learned from Chris about how Paylocity built an effective referral program that meets the top needs of their partners:

What percentage of your channel partners are achiveing their sales targets? Recruiting partners who are non-productive or a bad fit with your company is a costly waste of time. Paul Bird, Salesforce enthusiast and portal wizard at Magentrix, comes back for another Channel Journeys interview to share how you can find the right channel partners to grow your business.

Here are 3 tips to finding the right channel partners:

When creating or transitioning your technology offering to the software subscription as-a-service model, the traditional tiered channel program is going to look as old and outdated as the lump sum perpetual license. In this episode, I share how and why we updated our channel program at OutSystems to benefit our partners, customers, and internal sales and services teams. 

Why you may need to update your old Partner Program 

Key features of our new Partner Program

Ways to measure the success of your program

What exactly is a hybrid SaaS channel and what can it do for your company? That depends on who you ask. I spoke with channel pro Taylor Macdonald, SVP of Channel Sales at Sage Intacct, to get his view. Taylor built an indirect SaaS channel that now contributes 50% of the company’s overall revenue. Learn the benefits of his hybrid SaaS channel model and how to live in harmony with your direct sales force.

Here are the key lessons I learned from Taylor on Sage Intacct’s hybrid channel strategy and how they are getting the best of both worlds, direct and indirect. 

Customer experience is the name of the game for technology vendors. And when you’re counting on partners to grow your business, partner experience and customer experience go hand in hand. Today’s guest is Jeff McCullough, Global Vice President of Channel Sales at Park Place Technologies, a leader in data center services. Jeff describes how to measure partner and customer experience on your journey to customer success.