Executive buy-in is always at the top of the list of key success factors for a successful channel strategy. Dave Thomson, Chief Revenue Officer at Allbound, describes what you can do to gain that executive support. Apply these tips to gain buy-in for your partner strategy, your channel budget, and for reseources you need to execute. 

Here are 5 tips I learned from Dave about gaining executive support:

When stepping into a channel chief role, you’re hired for one of three missions. Run a channel, build a channel, or rebuild a channel. The rebuild is often the most challenging. Someone before you built a channel then lost it. And now you’ve got to step in and regain the trust of your partners.  Lynn Tinney, SVP of Global Partners at Zayo, faced this most difficult challenge. That’s why I’m thrilled to have her on the show to share how to achieve the two key ingredients to successful partnerships, mutual relevance and mutual commitment.

Here’s what I learned from Lynn about building mutual relevance and commitment:

How many channel chiefs do you know who have successfully climbed to the top of Mt. Everest? I’ve only met one, Louise McEvoy, who applys lessons learned from mountain climbing to her role as a channel chief. Louis, VP of US Channels at Trend Micro, loves adventure and thrives on change, both on and off the mountain. She is pursuing new markets and new ways to address changes in buyer behaviors applying a concept called the Blue Ocean Strategy. 

Here are some of the ways I learned from Louis to summit modern partnerships and drive new business:

You’re probably tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your transactional partners. These are the traditional metrics like partner sales, partner originated pipeline, and win rates.  But what are the right metrics to track the performance of the modern partner ecosytem such as system integrators, cloud hyperscalers, and strategic consulting firms? Joe Golemba, VP, Global Ecosystem & Partners at Pricefx, discusses the KPIs you should be measuring.

Here are some of the KPIs you should consider measuring to have a more data-driven partner strategy:

A year ago, I interviewed Lana King, VP of Partner Programs, Training and Enablement, on how Mitel is helping partners and their customers adopt the cloud business model through their unique partner managed program. A few months after that interview, Mitel struck a strategic partnership where RingCentral became their exclusive UCaaS partner. In this episode, Lana shares how Mitel is maintaining trust with partners through this massive change in their product strategy.

Here are 5 things I learned from Lana about maintaining trust with partners:

Buyer and worker behavior changed dramatically during the pandemic. Lynn Smurthwaite-Murphy, CEO of Plugable Technologies, discusses the impacts of the remote worker, digital buyer world on the channel and how to achieve success. The answer is surprisingly simple. 

Here are 5 things I learned from Lynn about the shift to a remote digital world:

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in our first live Partner Advisory Board (PAB) as the SVP Channels & Alliances at BeyondTrust. The setting was beautiful Monaco overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and the format was highly interactive. While there, I took the opportunity to record a live podcast to hear what our  Partner Advisory Board members thought of the PAB and the importance of a modern partner ecosystem.

Joining me in this podcast are Dana Reed, Distinguished Engineer, Office of the CTO at SailPoint; Eric Kohl, Vice President Advanced Solutions, Security & Networking at Ingram Micro; Per Samuelsen, Business Unit Lead at ICY Security; and Brent Thurrell, Chief Revenue Officer at BeyondTrust.

Here are 5 of the many things I learned during our PAB and this panel interview:

In the SaaS world, customer experience is king. Drive a great customer experience and customers will expand and renew their subscription to your service. Deliver a poor experience, and customers will quickly switch to a competitor and likely share their bad experience online. Genesis Lee, VP of Global Customer Experience at Allbound, shares how a customer-centric strategy can build happy customers and drive greater partner success.

Here are 5 things I learned from Genesis about customer experience and partner success:

We often think of channel partners, the ones selling our products, as the most vital element of our partner ecosystem. Nima Badiey, Global VP of Alliances at GitLab, shares why alliances are an invaluable component of your partner strategy and how to make them successful.

Here are 10 things I learned from Nima about Alliances and how to make them successful:

Have you ever heard your partner ask “You have great products, but why do you make it so difficult to buy?” Daren Finney, SVP Global Channels at Mitel, is on a mission to make it easier to buy their business communications and collaboration offerings. In this episode, Daren shares how he is leveraging distributors as they move to becoming Cloud Service Brokers to make it easier for their partners to buy their services combined with other vendors’ cloud offerings. 

Here are 5 things I learned from Daren about leveraging distributors as the expand their value add to cloud services: