John (00:01)
Oh my goodness, welcome back to the studio, Toni. It’s been a long time, it feels like, since we were here in the recording studio. Again, I’m so glad to be back together with you and get going on our next season of The Partnership Path.

Toni (00:15)
Yeah, season three and three is a magic number, John. So it is, yes.

John (00:19)
It is? Why do you say that? What’s magic about three?

Toni (00:24)
Well, there’s a song, isn’t there? I know the De La Soul version better than the original and it just says three is a magic number and I think there are reasons for that, that maybe people can write in and tell us but if De La Soul said it, it must be true.

John (00:38)
All right. It must be if it was in a song, I guess it must be true. Look, season two was a ton of work. We had a lot of fun and but it feels like it was kind of a whirlwind. We did a lot of episodes between our episodes and the in real life episodes. And as the listeners are probably realizing, we took a little bit of time off at the end of season two. We decided to take a little bit of break and kind of regroup and.

Toni (00:45)
Yeah.

John (01:08)
I mean, frankly, take a little bit of a rest. so it’s great to be back with you. But before we talk about season three, I do want to talk a little bit about what we did in season two. And, you know, one of the one of the things that I love about how we do these podcasts, I love doing these episodes with you or you and I get to talk a little bit about our experiences and kind of the the best practices that we’ve seen and that I teach and some of that. But.

I think the thing that really makes this podcast worth listening to is then we have all these people who are in the trenches out there doing the job come and join us and give us a dose of reality. Right? They come on. That’s why we call it in real life because they come on and say, yeah, that’s great. And here’s how it really works. Here’s what’s really happening out there. And I’m just so grateful to all these people that take time out of their day.

Toni (01:50)
Yeah.

John (02:02)
to not only spend it with me and kind of virtually you by listening to the episode first and then talking about it, but they are willing to share their experiences, their best practices with all their peers around the world. And I just think it’s great. So I want to take a minute and kind of call out some of those people that we had last season, right? Let’s go all the way back to the beginning. First season, two episode was on co-marketing with partners.

Toni (02:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, good.

John (02:32)
And we had Sonny Niyogi come on from Microsoft who talked about, you know, kind of reminding us number one of the basics of always focus on the customer, right? The marketing message ultimately is about the customer. And the thing I loved about Sonny was that he said, everyone knows how to market already because everyone knows how to tell a story. And that’s really all marketing is. That was one of my favorite things coming out of Sonny.

Anything you remember from Sonny or Eric? We had Eric Strauman from Vertigis on as well.

Toni (03:06)
Yeah, I think listening to Eric was the thing that struck me was, you know, he’s been in the industry or working in channel for 30 years, talks about, you know, having a 30 year career so far, working with partners and, and it, it, to me, that really spoke to the fact that this is a career, it’s a skill, it’s a set of disciplines. And it can be something that is

John (03:29)
Yeah.

Toni (03:35)
interesting, rewarding, challenging for the long term. This is not just a role in a business move on. So I thought it was great to hear the perspective of somebody that has got, you know, vast experience and continues to enjoy working with channel partners. So yeah.

John (03:40)
Right.

Yeah, he really did kind of, that’s so great that you called that out. Cause I do remember that now with him of this, he’s just this guy who’s so proud of being working with partners for all those years. was really, it was really cool to see. Yeah. All right. Well, then we moved on to the next episode, which is about account and territory mapping with partners. How do you kind of plan to go to market together in terms of what accounts you’re going to go after what territories.

Toni (04:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John (04:20)
And here we had Shawna Sampson from Illumino. Illumio. Illumio. That’s kind of a fancy company name. She joined us and, she had so many good pointers. One of the things I really loved about that episode with her was her willingness to essentially be vulnerable with the people that listen.

Toni (04:20)
Yeah.

Illumio? Illumio. Yeah. Ta-da! Yep.

Yep.

John (04:48)
talking about some of the mistakes that she made, and just being really upfront about, if I could have gone back and redone it, here’s what I would have done differently, and I think I would have gotten a better result. That was so cool, talking about, thinking about it from a regional perspective that people, the way you prepare and motivate, or the way you think about that mapping is different from one region to another, and understanding why.

Toni (04:48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

John (05:13)
A company is structured that way is so important. And that was one of her big questions that she never asked. And she was like, I should, I need to be asking that more. Love that.

Toni (05:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah and I think it is that, you know, people say it is about the why and sometimes we can feel a little bit unsure about asking that question and sometimes it does open up that relationship in a way because sometimes people say, do you know what, I don’t know why we do it that way, I’m going to go check. So same about when you ask someone why do you use that acronym and they go, do know, I don’t even know what it means.

John (05:41)
Yeah, right.

No. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And the because we’ve always done it this way is such a terrible answer to that why question, right? And yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, then we did season three episode three, which was co-selling with partners. We had two great in real life episodes there. What do you remember about co-selling with partners?

Toni (05:50)
Yeah, yeah, so I love that about that episode as well.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

Yep.

I was thinking and I made some notes on the episodes with Vicky Morris, who well works for some of the, you know, biggest names in tech and is currently at Splunk, I think. And she talked about there was one thing that she mentioned around actually, if you need to, and I’ve written sacking a partner, but if actually you need to potentially

John (06:20)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Toni (06:43)
bring something to a close. So she talked about some really difficult decisions that you might have to face and how you might deal with those. Plus there was that fact of, I noticed we’ve had people from the Netherlands with Eric and then Vicky’s in Australia and showing how, you know, this is a, you know, globally something that people are thinking about.

John (06:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. And it’s part of why I love having you as a co-host for this, Tony, is because you bring that across the pond perspective to the table for me. I mean, I’m a US guy. I spent most of my career in the US, although I’ve traveled everywhere, but I love that, that you’re here. And then I love that we’re able to bring people from so many different countries onto the show as well.

Toni (07:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah? Yeah.

John (07:31)
Part of the co-selling episode two, had Jen Martin from Microsoft came on. And she was really good because she really called me out on our definition of co-sell. How that means different things to different partners. And that we have to be really careful about how we use that terminology. And what does co-sell really mean in terms of being able to scale.

Toni (07:35)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

John (07:59)
your business and that you have to really think through how do I leverage this quote unquote, co-sell and what does that really mean for me or mean for my partner in order to really kind of scale the business. So love that from Jen.

Toni (08:11)
Yeah, yeah and ties into I think to Vicky saying about being really clear on your rules of engagement so actually yeah what’s the language that you share and what does that mean so I think yeah too right.

John (08:18)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, super good insight there. All right, then we moved on to episode four, which was preparing and motivating partner sales teams. How do you get the other side’s sales team to actually want to work with you and sell with you? Couple of great in real life episodes there as well. had Juana Terteljak from Microsoft. came on talking about how important it is to figure out what

Toni (08:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

John (08:50)
actually motivates them and then tailoring your value prop to that. And then the other thing that she just sort of, I just stood out in my mind after that episode was her talk about demonstrating to the partner that you can remove obstacles. And I think you even talked about that. I don’t remember if it was in that episode or a different one about, you know, kind of proving that you were, that you could earn the right to get to that sales team.

Toni (08:55)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it was the guy with the whiteboard, the sales director, he said, when when you sort this issue out for me, I’m going to rub it off, then you can speak to my sales floor. There was no question about I knew where I stood. And I knew what had to do. And it was very motivating. But I quite I sort of respected the fact that he was so black and white about it.

John (09:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And Wanda called that out for us. And then we had, for that episode, also had Stephanie Vasiloff, who’s currently with Flywheel, which, God, it was so good to hear from her. You and I talked about this a little bit in prep for this session too about, have, like these problems that channel people face are common. We just talked about the fact that it’s common around the world.

Toni (09:42)
Yeah.

Yes, flywheel. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

John (10:09)
but it’s also common regardless of the size of company that you work for.

Toni (10:13)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I think, know, no, nothing, no, it’s done. No, but I think it is that looking at, say, do AI in healthcare and life sciences, and, you know, you might think in very small, very niche, I mean, who knows what’s going to happen in the next, you know, two to five years there. But it is that fact of partnership is partnership. Yeah, whether you

John (10:17)
You have nothing to say about that? I thought you would…

Toni (10:44)
work for, you know, I can’t think of the right term, but a big ticket vendor, or if you’re working for a very niche or disruptive new to market software developer, you still got those same challenges around how do I work with this person to help them achieve their common goals? And yeah, it’s quite and I think it is that thing of

This kind of theory, content, training, discipline, whatever you want to call it, is applicable to anyone who has to work with anyone else.

John (11:23)
Anybody, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, one of the other things that Stephanie talked about that just really resonated with me was this, again, this emphasis on the customer, you know, that we talk so much about partnership and a lot of the stuff that you and I talk about and that I teach in my training is about really paying attention to what matters to the partner. And that can sometimes

Toni (11:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

John (11:51)
cause people to forget about the customer, right? Like that all those efforts are in terms of what’s good for the customer. And so she was just, she was so good at reminding us of never forget about the customer, never forget about the customer. Everything you’re doing is ultimately for the customer. Love that.

Toni (11:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely, yeah.

John (12:12)
Yeah, then we got to episode five, which was being a virtual sales manager. And there we had Selena Butler from InforCommod, one of my favorite people. I’ve worked with Selena for a really long time. She was super fun to have on talking about how important it is to kind of speak into the partner sales process to leave your own kind of baggage, I guess, you know, your own sales process at the.

Toni (12:20)
Yep.

Yeah.

John (12:40)
kind of at the front door and come into the room and really talk in terms of how they think about the sales process and how do we help them move the deal forward from their perspective.

Toni (12:50)
Yeah, and she spoke about that kind of credibility and trust as well, didn’t she? is that, which ties into that whole influence piece of you will know the calculation better than me. think it’s that, is it Maya? I got this wrong last time we spoke for that credibility, reliability, reciprocity. This is where I completely send us off the rails, John.

John (12:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s, no, no, it’s all good. But you’re right on, right? It’s the Trusted Advisor by David Maester. And he talks about its credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, all divided by self-orientation. How much do you talk about yourself, right? That’s his big trust formula, right? And that, is exactly what Selena’s getting at is quit forcing your

Toni (13:27)
Yes. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

John (13:42)
sales process on them and instead work and speak into their sales process, which is lowering your self-orientation. That’s how you build that trust, right? Yeah.

Toni (13:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, yes, exactly, that’s exactly what I was going to say.

John (13:54)
Yeah, yeah. All right. And then we finished the season with two episodes, one on pipeline reviews with partners and one on forecast reviews with partners. And for both of those, we had Gary Cockane from IFS. Gosh, I love listening to Gary talk. I’ve I’ve known Gary for probably 10 years. And I don’t know, Gary’s probably the same age as me, but I kind of

Toni (14:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

John (14:24)
like he’s a father figure to me because he’s so good at taking a concept that I’ve worked so hard to put together and then he makes it better. He finds a way to like improve it and just sort of add that little bit of nuance that makes so much sense. I loved in his pipeline review, I about fell out of my chair when he talked about giving partners the grace to

Toni (14:28)
Yeah.

John (14:52)
go back in his first meeting with them that he would say, go back and get rid of all the stuff in the pipeline that you know is not real. And even if we reduce the whole pipeline by 50%, that’s okay. Just let’s start with a clean sheet. Like what a revolutionary idea. Like it’s totally right, but I’ve never thought about actually recommending that. So I thought Gary was just awesome in giving that kind of advice.

Toni (15:00)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

He just knows his stuff and I like that. I mean, some people would be terrified at the thought of going, just take that out. there are times you know it’s not real. You know it’s there to maybe tick a box or to access some funding or people will make things up to get what they want.

John (15:28)
Yeah.

That’s right.

Toni (15:44)
But you need to get to the truth of the matter if you’re going to actually have a functioning partnership that delivers the right things. So I like that as well. thought, I can just imagine being able to do that. And Gary has proved that you can do that. Yeah, yeah.

John (15:53)
That’s right.

that you can and it works, And then on the forecasting stuff, he blew me away again with his, love, he’s got one of those personalities where I can just see him sitting with a partner and actually being able to say this stuff. Like his thing was on the forecast, let’s remember that there’s only a gold medal. There’s no other medals. You either get the gold or you don’t get a win, right? Or you don’t get a medal at all. So it’s, you either win the deal.

Toni (16:24)
Yeah.

John (16:30)
or you don’t. So when we talk about forecasting, like there’s no halfway there. There’s no, 50 % to close, right? It’s like you either win it or you don’t. I don’t, sometimes I think that’s a hard message to deliver and Gary just makes it feel so nice. Like it’s okay to say that.

Toni (16:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it’s quite odd with the British schools attitude to sports day. Everybody wins, but Gary is correct. You either win it or you don’t. So, yeah, I’m all for that. Yeah.

John (16:59)
Yes.

Yes. Yes. It might be his British accent that makes it come across as so nice. It may very well be that that’s how he gets away with it. I’m not sure. Anyway, great, great season two. And I just, cannot emphasize enough to our listeners how much we appreciate all you coming on the show with us, sharing your best practices, taking time out of your day to…

Toni (17:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

John (17:29)
to essentially help people as we’ve just seen all over the world in every size company get a little bit better at this channel management stuff. season two, it’s in the books. And in fact, it’s been in the books for a little while. It’s been about six weeks since we dropped the last episode. And so now we’re moving on to season three. And I’ve given you what I thought or what I…

believe the title for se I know you’ve got some th title and

Toni (18:13)
Yeah, so, well, was, you know, we were having a chat, weren’t we? And you said, I think for season three, we should be talking about elevating the game. So level two partnerships, elevating the game. And I really like that. And in conjunction with something that Stephanie Vasiloff said, you know, elevating the game isn’t necessarily, so in a corporate context and thinking back on my, you know, own

career as a partner account manager, we might have thought that was getting the biggest, most prestigious partner to manage. But actually it doesn’t have to mean that in elevating your game, is like, can you be the very best that you can? can you, yeah, just be someone who is known for and respected for delivering excellence.

John (18:47)
Right. Right.

Toni (19:10)
It isn’t about status, it’s actually about, can you be the very best that you can? So I really like that because for us personally, you do want to elevate your game and improve on the skills that you have. So I thought it was a really great way to put it.

John (19:27)
Yeah. It kind of hearkens back to what you said at the very beginning of this episode about Eric Strauman at Vertigis, right? About that this is a career. And if it’s going to be a career, then you’ve got an opportunity to keep getting better every year and just to have that sort of pursuit for excellence. And that’s really what we want to do in season three is give some pointers on some of that and then hear from the field.

Toni (19:34)
Mmm.

Yeah.

John (19:56)
How does that really work? So these are the topics we’re going to do. We got seven topics for season three. We’re going to do managing your portfolio compared to managing your partnerships, right? Kind of thinking about how you think about everything that you own at once. In addition, you still have to manage partnerships, but how do I also think about that bigger picture? The second episode is going to be on decision influence and how do we apply some of those classic sales techniques of understanding

Toni (20:18)
Yeah.

John (20:25)
kind of who’s making the decision and who’s influencing the decision. How do we do that in partnerships and where does that actually fit? We’re gonna talk about in episode three about planning for partnership negotiations, like making sure you know what you want when you come to the table because you can sure bet the partner knows what they want when they come to the table, so you better be ready. Episode four will be about growing competitive mind share. So how do I grow my partnership by starting to limit

Toni (20:44)
Like a list.

John (20:55)
some of the things I compete with in the partner’s mind and wallet. Episode five will be around growing organically. So how do we make the playing field bigger with our partners? How do we find new opportunity? Episode six is one that actually came from a listener who said, hey, I really want you guys to do an episode on this, which is managing internal stakeholders. And so we’re not only gonna do that episode, but we’re gonna have that person.

Toni (21:14)
Great.

Mm-hmm.

John (21:23)
come on and talk about it in the in real life episodes. And then we’re going to finish the season talking about multi-party partnerships, is very, very prevalent. It’s becoming more more prevalent in the market today, right? That we can’t go to market just with one partner. It’s actually a collection of partners that we go to market with. And we have to start to think about those collections as a partnership. But how do we do that?

Toni (21:26)
Great.

John (21:51)
How do you manage three organizations or four organizations at once trying to go to market together? So that’s what we’re going to do in season three. Yeah, I’m sorry, what?

Toni (21:57)
Finishing with a party.

We’re finishing with a party. Multi-party partnerships. Yeah, yeah. Feels fitting.

John (22:03)
We are finishing with a party. All right. I am super excited. And there’s one other thing I want to share with the listeners before we leave this this little launch for season three, which is we’re going to slow things down just a little bit. One of the things that we’ve learned over the last year that we’ve been doing this is kind of takes a lot of work to put these together. And so we’re going to just slow things down just a little bit, probably be releasing an episode every

Toni (22:28)
Mm.

John (22:33)
10 days or might be as much as two weeks in between episodes. And then of course, we’re coming into the fall. So Thanksgiving and Christmas are gonna get in the way a little bit. And so it might even feel a little bit slow at times, but we are moving forward with season three and there’ll be regular drops and we’ll make sure and notify you guys of when they hit. So I can’t wait.

Toni (22:55)
Yeah, and plenty in the back catalogue to listen to, the way, John. Let’s not forget.

John (22:59)
Totally.

I think we have 45 or 46 total episodes out there now. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Tony, can’t wait to get back on with you for managing portfolios instead of partnerships. That’ll be our first episode for season three.

Toni (23:06)
Fantastic. Yeah.

Fantastic. See you then, John.

John (23:20)
Talk soon.