Speaker 1: 0:23

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by the MoPros. I am your host, michael Hartman, flying solo. Today we are bringing back a recent guest, asher Matthew, to kind of pick up on the conversation that we were going to start with when he was last on, but where we went on a little bit of a different direction. So, just to recap, asher is the co-founder and CEO of Partnership Leaders. Partnership Leaders is a private network built to elevate the role of partner teams and their companies. Prior to Partnership Leaders, asher held senior leadership roles in partnerships and go-to-market including roles at Demandbase, avalara and Lead Data. So, asher, thanks for joining again.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Yeah, no, thanks, so much. Uh, I'm glad I'm back again. Uh, in short order, and uh, uh and uh, you know, now that we don't have mike rizzo on this podcast, we'll actually be focused on the topic sure?

Speaker 1: 1:17

yeah, let's, let's try like. Thanks, mike, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Yeah, I made sure he was busy today I know just for the audience who may not know, and if somebody just listened to this episode, I may not have listened to the other episode. Mike and I have known each other for four years and we're on a WhatsApp chat group and we chat pretty much all the time. So every time we get on a call or something like that, there's lots to catch up on. But I just felt like the story about why communities are built and how they're funded was just a super important thing to tackle now, because you know communities need their stakeholders, which are customers, to support them so that they can do the good work to elevate all of us.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Yeah. So for those who are listening to this and did not have not listened to the previous episode, I encourage you to go back to the reason why we went ahead with the direction that and this happens occasionally on our conversations they don't stay on the path that we intended for them, but this one was, I agree it was an important conversation for those. I think it was really valuable, even for me, who I've known Mike now for a number of years as well, but probably not on a regular basis. Like you, are Just understanding the mechanics behind creating a community, like the ones you all have done, and some of the considerations you go through about funding or not to get funding, or what kind of strings you're willing to put on those and which ones you aren't, and all that kind of good stuff.

Speaker 2: 2:38

It's how we make decisions every day.

Speaker 1: 2:42

I actually was talking to Mike earlier today and one of the things we talked about was a little bit about, like you know, what happens when, uh, when, a community gets an injection of significant capital, right, I think? I think it can have. It can be positive or or negative, I don't know that there's any one solution, but I think it's how, how it affects the way it operates and is it still standby. It's you know ethos, if you will, of how, how it wants to operate, how it affects the way it operates and is it still standby. It's you know ethos, if you will, of how, how it wants to operate, how it wants people to participate, and if it keeps that and so anyway, no, I do think it was. It was a valuable conversation, so and that's not to discount that at all, um, but we still want to give mike a hard time, right?

Speaker 2: 3:26

Totally.

Speaker 1: 3:33

So, um, I said and it's a truth be told like, uh, it's been long enough that and okay, this is the dirty little secret. I don't actually listen to our podcast episodes after the recorded. It's very hard.

Speaker 1: 3:41

My memory is short. I listened to lots of other podcasts in between, but not ours. Typically Occasionally I will, so I'm trying to remember if we covered this at all. We may have gotten into it, but one of the things that I remember from our conversation a while back, when we were first starting to talk to you, was this you know the idea of what I think you've called operational debt, and most of our listeners will be familiar with technical debt, yeah, coming from a marketing ops or marketing tech background. Like what do you, what do you mean by that? And like what do you see as the issues from that?

Speaker 2: 4:16

Yeah so. So for me, technical debt gets incurred when you get sloppy in engineering and you just create lots of different code that's just lying around in the product and even if it's marked as don't use it or it's combinated out so the compiler doesn't compile that code. You know it's just a bunch of like code that's just lying around. It can also mean like old hardware sitting around or just plugged into the network and it's just never being utilized, and you know it's just anything that's on the product side to me is a that is not maintained, the resources are not maintained.

Speaker 2: 5:00

Incurred technical debt and for operational debt is the same thing on the people and process side right? Because if technical debt is on the technology and data side and we stay true to the people, process, technology, data framework, then operational debt is on the people and process side. And so to me, what happens is you have older processes that just aren't relevant for today's age. There are rules of engagement that have been created since the company was formed and it's just never been updated. There are people in roles doing tasks that aren't current and your customers aren't looking for service the same way. So all of these things create operational debt. And then when you start to scale and you open the floodgates and you say, well, we have 10 customers, now we're going to get 100.

Speaker 1: 6:00

You don't feel it.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Yeah, let me ask you so, as you're describing this, it reminds me of a scenario that I saw one place where and typical for marketing ops people, right I was working a lot with a procurement team and this procurement team had a very deliberate process for requests to come in, get a review, get approved, go through, you know, and they managed all that.

Speaker 1: 6:22

But what I found is there was like one system where I could go in and make a request and I just assumed that was sort of the system of record, but what I found out in talking to the procurement person was no, in fact, that person then turned literally, was like copying, pasting into another document or system and then into a spreadsheet. So there's all this like inefficient things, that just, and I was like but that person never really, it's just the way that she had always done it or had been told to do it, and never raised either, neither raised nor was listened to about that, and I was like that doesn't make any sense. I was like, can I? So my instinct was to try to help, even though it wasn't really my domain, because that's just like why are we doing it this way?

Speaker 2: 7:06

It doesn't make any sense Totally, and it's just. It's because things are stuck in a way that they work and then there's still somewhat work and then you just get sloppy over time. That creates a lot of bad habits.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Yeah, so I'm sure I you know, I think this is a good thing. So, again, marketing ops pros I'm sure are familiar with the idea of technical debt, especially if they walk into some place and they have fresh eyes on all this stuff. But I think there's operational debt. The biggest operational debt challenge I've seen, I think, in marketing ops is typically approval processes, and it comes in a couple of flavors right, like website content, right, all these content management systems have the ability to have these approval processes and steps.

Speaker 1: 7:54

And what I found is that basically that's where things get break down. Right, content will be ready, but you have the two or three levels of approval before things can go out. And I'm like, why do we have that? And usually people just work around it, they just approve everything or they just ignore it and they publish over it anyway. The other one I've seen is approval processes on just in general for, like, go-to-market activities and to the point where, yeah, there's redo. Well, the biggest one that bothers me, and this is where roles and responsibilities fit in a little bit, or you could do racy charts or rapid or whatever kinds of things you want to do, but what I find is there's not always a clear person who has the right to approve, but, more importantly, there's multiple people who feel like they have veto power.

Speaker 2: 8:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:48

Have you experienced that kind of stuff?

Speaker 2: 8:49

In marketing teams or especially dealing with marketing, when every exec thinks that they're the CMO, that's extremely difficult environment for marketing ops to work in. I can feel the pain. I've been in a couple teams where everybody thinks they're the CMO and I'm like, well, that's going to be a problem, yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:15

To me, all those kinds of things are a sign of a lack of trust.

Speaker 2: 9:19

Yeah, that part is true, but I also think that it's more of a lack of rigor. The trust piece, I think, is great, but then if there's already a set of rules or norms or whatever you may call it established, then they need to be followed Right and and and then, but they do need to be updated over time too.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Absolutely no. It's funny that you see, like updating your view of things over time or your opinion about things, it's. I don't want to get into politics per se, but I think in politics people will say they're, oh, they're, you know, they they flip-flop on stuff and and I and younger me would have thought, yeah, that's like, why would you do that? Like you stick to your principles and I was like, but older me now has been like if you get new information, you should. You should challenge your assumptions and beliefs, and.

Speaker 1: 10:12

I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 2: 10:15

And we know what's interesting is like like we're all, like we have to move from absolute to possibilities in our point of view of life and work, and so so or maybe from absolutes to probabilities, if you want to call it, I just call it possibilities, because to me, that's a much better way of looking at what is possible and how do we do it better and get there. And so it's hard, it's very hard, but it's needed, and so you do need to create a safe environment to bring people along, and to me, that is one way marketing ops can become strategic, which is you are a leader leading this. Let's call it process transformation, if you want to call it that, but the change management piece of it is where you need leadership skills.

Speaker 1: 11:06

Yeah of it is where you need leadership skills. Yeah, now I mean, you're the possibilities, the the one the term I like to use is trade-offs and like I steal from thomas saul, economist, but he's like there's not, generally speaking, like there's not right or wrong answers in most, in many cases there, there are multiple answers that each have trade-offs, right and getting to that point. We got started a little bit late here because I was dealing with logistics with teenagers and one of the things I see now as a parent of teenagers I probably didn't see when I was that age but is that? They see those absolutes right? It's right or wrong or not?

Speaker 2: 11:49

But it's reinforced from school Sure.

Speaker 1: 11:52

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:54

Everything is like yes or no. But also I think it's important for them to understand just how the basics of life work right. I mean, my kids are 6 and 8, so I'm living this right now.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Obviously, your kids are older, yeah yeah, it's definitely like learning how the aid. So I'm living this right now. I obviously, your kids, your kids are older. So, yeah, yeah, no, I it's. It's definitely like learning how the words, the way the world works.

Speaker 1: 12:14

I was just trading messages with my oldest, who is worried that he he, he put it put the wrong title on his resume for a current job he's got, as he's getting ready for, you know, planning for internships the following year, and it was like, uh, I don't remember, you know associate versus you know, uh, something else. And I was like nobody cares, right, so don't sweat that. Uh, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's interesting, so maybe we can go a little bit like you think. So getting getting like you talked about, like this mindset of of being strategic, uh, it's something that, like a lot of marketing ops folks talk about. I think you're right and you're hitting on this. Like this idea of of seeing where this operational debt is affecting our ability to get things done as a team, like not just marketing but overall is something where I think we could all add a lot of value, and it feels like there needs to be that approach where you're trying to.

Speaker 1: 13:20

There was a LinkedIn sort of back and forth earlier this week, even where I chimed in and was like I think what I try to do is be consultative. I think that's what you need to do, which requires you to understand what the other person's objective is, even if you believe it's unreasonable, and then to really understand what are they trying to get to and then work with them to come up with a solution, even if it's not 100% of what they initially asked for, because people are not really great at describing what they want, nor should you expect them to know what it takes to deliver the 100%. And what I found is when either I've done or when I've had teams come back to me who are doing this, well, they'll come back with what you asked for. The 100%. We can get you 80% for 10% of the cost and effort and reduced risk.

Speaker 1: 14:12

Like I'm much, I'm very willing to make that trade off in many cases, I may not Right, but I think coming to the table with that rather than but I see a lot of marketing ops, folks, people as finger pointing that, oh, they just don't get it, they're dumb, they don't understand. And I think that's counterproductive.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Yeah, it is, and I think it's a mindset shift, because you have to be able to and I know it's hard to do because this requires a lot of self-control, right, and you just have to walk into every conversation thinking about you're above the conversation and this took me personally a very long time to do. Because businesses are resilient, teams are resilient. If you are in the zero to one million stage, yes, you may get whacked out. If you are in the one to ten million stage, you make a couple of mistakes, you get a few more mistakes that you can make. You get whacked out. But if you're at that ten million plus or fifty million plus or twenty million plus revenue level, one mistake or two mistakes or something gets delayed by two days isn't going to knock you out of the game.

Speaker 1: 15:33

No, I think there's this difference between what we just talked about. Right, the quote writes the right way to do something and every other way.

Speaker 2: 15:47

Yeah, totally To that note. We used to have a value at partnership leaders called speed and we were like things just need to move fast. And then this year we actually went away with that and we said we need to replace it with a value called urgency, which means it doesn't just have to move fast, but it also has to be right.

Speaker 1: 16:17

That's an interesting distinction I don't think I would have. If you had just said those two words, I wouldn't have picked up on that description, so I'm glad you described it. This is a good example, right where we assume, like you used certain words. I would have otherwise assumed they meant something else, and I don't even care what. Like you could pick whatever words you want, maybe there's a better word, but I I do like that distinction of moving, moving fast, just to move fast, versus, you know, having that urgency to move quickly, but with the mindset of trying to build, do something in a way that is, I assume what you mean is like, not the like, do it right, but do it, do it in a way that is going to be sustainable or on a path towards sustainability and scalability. Yeah, okay, yeah, I like that. Which, like this, like this is a great example to me, though, of the kind of conversation that you should.

Speaker 1: 17:14

I learned also the hard way.

Speaker 1: 17:16

Well, some of it was because I was in consulting for a long part of my early career, so learning to adapt my language to the language of a client was an important thing to get a client was an important thing to get, and so if you think about that within your own organization, if you're inside, or consultants, I think have to do this naturally to survive. But clarifying what someone means, don't trust your assumptions, because too many times I know I've found where, when I play something back to somebody and I do it in my own words, I try to like, like you said this, I think you mean this. Yep, am I right? And if I'm not, they'll, they're more than happy to clarify, because I think we all want to do that and that I think that's probably the distinction between what you just said of speed versus urgency is like speed would have just bypassed that second step of clarifying. Okay, love it, okay. I mean, are there any other ideas you can think of to help our audience to try to avoid operational debt like that, where they can?

Speaker 2: 18:20

Yeah is sometimes you do have to fight the rest of the org on moving fast because, depending on the storm of the day, you do have to move fast Absolutely. If you've already made that mistake before and it's the same people, then it's the ops leader's job to surface that that mistake was made before, so it's not made again. Yeah, that's another way to demonstrate urgency where you just don't make the same mistakes again.

Speaker 1: 19:05

Good point, I agree. So that's a good, because I think a lot of people could have walked away from that first part thinking, well, that just means I'm going to kind of take what they want me to do and I may come up with a different solution. That's a little bit easier, but still like ultimately the goal, or that what we were doing is not the right thing to do, or the best thing to do, maybe, and so they should still. And that's yeah. I mean.

Speaker 1: 19:32

I think the idea is like do what you can to work with somebody so you have a build a long-term relationship, but when you have to, I think it helps build the credibility that you're willing to work with someone, because then, when you do have to go Hmm, we either tried this before and this is what happened, remember, uh, or you say you know, I get what you're saying. I really don't think we should do this, and this is why a, b and C and you're going to be able to have a better conversation than if you just say no. Yeah, I think I think too many people I I feel like too many people either just say no or want to just say no, and so that comes. They don't do it that directly, but it comes through in how it affects the relationship with the rest of those teams.

Speaker 2: 20:15

Yeah. So what you're hitting on right now is just a very different. I think the art of saying no is also a acquired skill, because the way we are all built as humans, we're all designed to actually say yes, and I think there's some studies on this stuff too, but learning how to say no is super powerful. Actually, I have a recommendation for people, as if I can come up with that.

Speaker 1: 20:52

Well, for our listeners. He's actively searching. I'll just say like one of the things that I've found as a parent for those of you who are parents, you'll get this. If you're not a parent, you maybe one day will. But one of the things it's hard to do as a parent, especially with young kids, is to not be constantly saying no right, because otherwise people don't learn. You know young people and so that balance of like the other part is it's a little bit of you know who crying wolf right. So when you tell them no because it's a safety thing, if you just are always saying no and it actually is a safety thing they don't react the same as if you're not doing it all the time. Did I buy you enough time, asher?

Speaker 2: 21:34

I'm still looking for the thing Farnham Street. There is a newsletter called Farnham Street, farnham Street, farnham Street, yeah, and it's by a gentleman called Shane Farman, I believe.

Speaker 1: 21:57

F-A-R-N-A-M. Farnham. Yeah, okay, farnham Street, I found it yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:02

Yeah, okay, I found it. Yeah, that's a really good newsletter to subscribe to.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Okay, this is great. Yeah, all right, we'll, we'll put a. We'll put a link in the in the show notes. I've got this up here now and I'll, as we're getting this in a bit published. I'll, I'll, I'll put it together. Make sure that gets in there. Oh, and, I see it says Brain Food Newsletter, so sounds good. One more thing to read Okay, awesome, Okay, so let's shift gears a little bit. This is probably the biggest part of what we didn't get to, I think, last conversation when Mike was here is this idea of sort of an emerging or something you're a fan of, called partnership go-to-market motions. We've had a number of people on with what I would call these emerging sort of newer ideas for go-to-market approaches and why they're out there. But when you talk about partnered go-to-market approaches and why they're out there, but when you talk about partnered go-to-market maybe first, definitionally, what does that mean to you?

Speaker 2: 23:12

Yeah, so partnered go-to-market. All it means is you leverage companies or you build a relationship with companies that are serving the same buyer or the same market right and who you have a complementary solution with. So it could be a software, it could be a service, but if there's an opportunity to align your resources to serve a mutual customer, that's the premise of a partner go-to-market.

Speaker 1: 23:58

Got it, and so I mean that sounds like something that I've heard of before. Right, there are partner marketing and partner teams, Yep. What are some of the trends happening in the space right now that you're seeing?

Speaker 2: 24:14

Yeah, so what's really happened in the space is the tooling that was available for partner teams. There was lots of investment that was made 24 months ago and now we're seeing an explosion in the tooling. And then there's just modern tooling now for all partner functions, whether it's partner payments, partner sales, partner marketing. There's a bunch of new tooling that's out there that allows you to work at scale with partners, and so that's the big trend. Right times are tough and you have to grow efficiently. Finding other companies that serve the same market and the same buyer in that market makes a lot of sense to align.

Speaker 1: 25:13

Sure gotcha. So, do you think. But do you think it's um? Given that, do you think this is a you know, gonna be a blip, so to speak, a short-term thing, or or is it going to follow the economic cycle? I guess the longer term question.

Speaker 2: 25:28

Yeah, so so what's now happened? Interestingly, right, if you think about it, inside the partner go-to-market there is the different types of partners that you can market and sell with right, just like in the direct go-to-market. There is a community motion, right. There is a customer motion, there is a inbound motion, if you want to call it. There is a SDR motion or an outbound motion. Then there's, like segments that you can go to mid-market, smb, startup or enterprise, right. So there's all these things, right. But in the partner go-to-market there were two primary motions referral and resale.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yep.

Speaker 2: 26:18

And what's happened over the last 24 months is this motion called co-sell or co-market has become popular.

Speaker 1: 26:29

Okay.

Speaker 2: 26:30

Because referral means I made a referral to you. Mike, you do whatever you do with it, but you just pay me a referral fee.

Speaker 1: 26:38

Right, got it, we sell me.

Speaker 2: 26:41

Mike, you are selling my services as part of your sales process. Co-sale means you and I sat down and said Mike Rizzo is a good prospect, let's go sell to him together.

Speaker 1: 27:01

Gotcha, gotcha, um. So I'm also familiar, having worked at like a equipment company where we had distributors and um what do you call it? Um, uh, like channel, like other, like they were not, they were their manufacturers reps. Basically, is it like do you think that's going to evolve too, or is this more of a trend that's happening in tech, software kind of space?

Speaker 2: 27:30

Yeah, I think you'll see the motion become popular in all industries. Now, what happens in manufacturers and distribution? Right, like manufacturers are building something, yes, right. So you will see the cold building motion take place there, where some manufacturers say look, we are experts in a chip, you are experts in a chassis, why don't we come up with an agreement to build things together and send it out? And you're seeing this right now. And, let's say, the best example of co-building is OpenAI and Microsoft.

Speaker 1: 28:14

Ah, okay.

Speaker 2: 28:15

So OpenAI is saying look, I have an application called AI. Or ChatGPT.

Speaker 2: 28:21

AI or chat GPT, right, and I'm going to create this large language model, which is the brains of my product, and Microsoft is saying look, I can't compete with you directly on this because you're just so far ahead and I also want to compete with the market, so why don't I give you the servers that ChatGPT will run on and the databases where you can store the data that needs to be processed through your large language model? And now, the two of those things I'll give it to you in exchange for whatever they dealt with right, and that's an example of co-building.

Speaker 2: 29:19

So co-building is also a part of a partner go-to-market.

Speaker 1: 29:21

Hmm, okay so, like co-building on products or services.

Speaker 2: 29:25

Okay, so I'm like co-building on products or services. Yeah, so then co-serving is also a motion right when you have a service and when your service stops. If I have a service that helps continue, then we should be co-selling and also co-serving.

Speaker 1: 29:42

Yeah, makes sense and also co-serving, yeah, makes sense. So the co-building it feels like it's a lighter version of, say, a joint venture where you don't have the yes, totally, you're not just setting up a separate entity and all that Totally.

Speaker 2: 29:58

And a joint venture is one way of how co-building manifests itself.

Speaker 1: 30:02

Sure Okay.

Speaker 2: 30:03

But the motions are co-building, co-selling, co-marketing, and co-building manifests itself Sure Okay, but the motions are co-building, co-selling, co-marketing and co-serving.

Speaker 1: 30:09

That makes sense yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:11

Okay, technically, if you were to augment the direct motion, you would get the partner go-to-market motion.

Speaker 1: 30:22

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, and so you're seeing that there's been sort of a shift to maybe not a shift over to partner go-to-market approaches, but maybe a larger allocation of that from the overall go-to-market budgets from the traditional direct channels.

Speaker 2: 30:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:43

Okay, and you feel like that's going to continue just regardless of what happens as the economy goes? I mean, predicting the future is a fool's game, but I'm going to put you on the spot anyway.

Speaker 2: 30:57

I do think for the foreseeable future. If you look at the trends right now, I think people have said, or investors have said, that we want profitable companies versus high-growth companies and in that world headcount comes down. So you're in a world where you have to retool or rebuild to go to market from a seed-based model to a consumption-based model, which is interesting because I think Marketo at one point in time was a consumption-based model. I think at some level it still is but marketing.

Speaker 1: 31:36

Like database size. Yeah, as far as I know, it still is.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Yeah, so marketing is probably very familiar with the consumption-based model. Yeah and so, but but in the larger sas market, which is very seed-based, um, they have to move to consumption-based and so once they move to that go-to-market model, then moving back to seed-based is going to take some time. So I I think some people may just not move at all. But the other big thing is where is budget coming from? And budget is now coming from the CIO's office because they are signing all these large agreements for cloud services with Microsoft, aws and Google Cloud.

Speaker 1: 32:24

Right.

Speaker 2: 32:25

And all of those companies are saying hey, if you want to buy business applications, you can buy them on our marketplace and utilize the same dollars that are parked inside of this cloud service agreement. And that's where the budget is coming from, that whole cloud service agreement, and that's where the budget is coming from that whole cloud service agreement is a consumption model.

Speaker 2: 32:57

Yes, so buying seats on a consumption model doesn't really make sense, but buying utilizing those dollars for sure does, and so that's why I'm saying I feel like the partner go-to-market is much bigger. It has platforms, it has marketplaces, it has AI, it has partner marketing, partner sales in it. Going to spend a lot of time moving to a consumption-based model and investing in a partner go-to-market motion that you will and there's tooling now to scale this motion Then you are in a awesome spot which will be long-lasting.

Speaker 1: 33:41

Yeah, I mean I'm trying to put myself in the seat of a buyer and I think I see, see, one thing that maybe would be a good thing for the selling companies. One is say, I already have a relationship with you and you're, say, a partner to company X, but I don't really know company X. Company X wants to get me. You know, they now have, through a trusted relationship, right access to me as a buyer, which I think is a powerful thing these days because I mean, everywhere I'm seeing it right people are trusting their networks for recommendations and feedback and they're not trusting the sellers and the marketers as much. But on the flip side, I now, depending on how these deals are structured, I now have two or more vendors that I have to manage and I'm always like, okay, what happens when something, if something doesn't go well, right, how do I hold who do I? How do I hold both of them accountable for the output, as opposed to going? It's just this one.

Speaker 2: 34:47

Yep.

Speaker 1: 34:48

So I think there's that that challenge there, but I think I think that that trust, like trusting, trusting the network part that feels like that's got longer, that part right there I think is going to help that stay longer. I mean, I think it's historically been there but everybody felt like they could do everything through digital and I think it's going to be back to relationships.

Speaker 2: 35:10

Yeah, which I think it always was right, like in the beginning too right, but there's only so much you can do digitally. You still need word of mouth, and so you can do it two ways. You can ask your customers to make intros, which then they're your partner, yeah. Or you can go out and talk to other companies that talk to the that, that talk to the same persona and the same buying center, and then do you have a partner, so you can partner with your customers. Or you can partner with outside third-party companies.

Speaker 1: 35:43

Right, yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so that all makes sense to me. I can see why that's growing and knowing what else is going on in the market. That point about the financial impact is, I think, an important one, right, that push to profitability versus growth and the operational components of enabling this kind of approach. What are some of the things that they should be thinking about if their organization is talking about growing that way, or if they want to actually again, kind of from a strategic standpoint, make a suggestion of we could enable that partner approach and here's how we would do it.

Speaker 2: 36:32

Yeah, a partner approach and here's how we would do it.

Speaker 2: 36:36

Yeah, um, so if you have marketing operations and they want to participate in the partner go-to-market, I think the best point part is to figure out how to get partner marketing done right, but also know that the partner marketer is such a lonely role that they are trying to get support from the larger marketing group, but the larger marketing group doesn't fully understand their goals and so that partner marketer has to figure out how to do the strategy and execution of those partner marketing efforts themselves.

Speaker 2: 37:16

That's a really like quote unquote tough thing. So I would say that if I could make a call out and encouragement to the marketing ops leaders listening to this podcast is lean into your partner marketer on your team and help enable them to work better and faster with you. Because the way, the inner day in the life of a partner marketer, they have to come up with a campaign and then they have to go figure out how to get the content done, how to get the ads built, how to get the lead list together it's all these things right and then they have to figure out all the internal mechanisms. But if you have leaders who are thinking about partners as a stakeholder and a marketing ops leader specifically, then they can create an amazing, awesome experience for the partner marketer to get their jobs done, and then the partner marketer has a lot of time to focus on revenue generating activities versus dealing with internal ops. Yeah with internal ops.

Speaker 1: 38:32

Yeah, You're making me think of again going back to this manufacturer that I worked for for a while where we had distributors and manufacturers reps in multiple countries. I remember the people who were trying to work with those partners and they were sharing. They would have co-marketing budgets and figure out how much we would allocate and how do we prioritize one partner over another if we're doing stuff? And then how do we get leads routed? They come to us, do they go to them? All that kind of stuff. It's a lot of the same stuff that we think about with direct selling, and I'll just sort of simplify it. Rather than direct selling versus partner selling, I'll just sort of simplify it. Right, it's direct selling versus partner selling and it generally didn't get the kind of attention that the direct selling did because it was more complicated.

Speaker 2: 39:27

So, yeah, I get that now because I lived through that and now I'm starting to wonder if I provided the right kind of support.

Speaker 1: 39:35

Well, we can all do better. You know I'll tell you that. Are there any? You mentioned a lot of sort of technology that talk about specific vendors or anything but any kind of categories of technology where marketing ops folks should be aware of if they're going to be dealing with this? Yeah, or tools, I know. One of the things that I've run into before is what kind of access should a partner have to our CRM, for example?

Speaker 2: 40:13

Yeah, so the way okay. So, from a tools perspective, there are a number of, I want to say, partner marketing tools that are coming onto the market, but I would also say, like, people should use the tools that they already have before they move into, like new tools. Right, use the tools that they already have before they move into new tools. But what I would say is marketers need to have lists lists of accounts and lists of contacts, and there are a number of new tools in the marketplace that help with creating partner lists much, much faster than before. And then there are lots of campaigns that are ready-made now available in the market that literally work. But it all comes down to enabling the person. So if you can enable the person, which is the partner marketer, you'll get, you'll get. You'll get uh out much faster okay, yeah, all right.

Speaker 1: 41:20

So tools out there for building lists and coordinating um, are there any? Are there any particular unique? Uh, like I'm trying to get to the privacy concern stuff. So you're sharing of PPI or PII sorry data between organizations. Is there anything that we need to be thinking about from that standpoint, from a risk standpoint, anything like that?

Speaker 2: 41:47

Not as much as other things. Right, I think there is a For marketing ops leaders. Third-party data is actually way more dangerous, I would say, than second-party data, which is the partner data, right, okay, and so? Because third-party data you really have no permission to do anything with technically today, right, right, and second-party data, the company's customers and as you work with partners, you know the company's customers do give permission to do something with right, and all you're saying is my customers and as you work with partners, you know the. The company's customers do give permission to do something with right, and all you're saying is my customers and your customers we should figure out how to go to market and utilize their data together. Yeah, so so?

Speaker 1: 42:47

so there's some unique considerations there, but it's really like I think what I'm hearing you say is there's not. It's not necessarily all that much different than when we're doing stuff directly with prospects or customers. Yes, okay, sounds good. So we've covered a lot of ground and somehow I thought this would be a short call and, given that we had already talked but it feels like we could there's a whole lot more that we might miss. Is there anything else, before we finish up, that we haven't covered yet from a partner go-to-market standpoint?

Speaker 2: 43:20

Yeah, I would make an encouragement to the listeners to say, hey, go explore, partner go-to-market, because it's not something that's scary. Sometimes there's a thing called the planning tax that comes into play. But if you have a awesome partner marketer on team, if you can free up their time from all the internal processes, then they'll be more effective externally and help you get your goals.

Speaker 1: 43:46

Good, good point. That's great. Any suggestions on other than existing, like if you have a partner marketer, obviously that's a good resource. Are there any other resources you can suggest for people to learn about if they don't have a partner marketing program?

Speaker 2: 44:00

You can totally just come to partnershipleaderscom. Um, and our blog is full of uh, uh, uh, partner marketing, uh, resources.

Speaker 1: 44:10

Fantastic, all right. Well, that's leads us right us right into my last bit, which is if folks want to take that deeper dive, or maybe even reach out to you or learn more about what you're doing or what you're talking about, what's the best place for them to do it?

Speaker 2: 44:24

Yeah, I mean you can go to our website and just apply to become a member, or you can drop me an email at asher A-S-H-E-R at partnershipleaderscom and I can help guide you. But the thing that you definitely should do is follow us on LinkedIn, because there's a Partner Leaders company page that we created. Follow us on that and we utilize that as a notification channel a lot.

Speaker 1: 44:51

Terrific. There you go. Awesome, asher. I'm glad we got to do this again. I was worried we wouldn't be able to do it for a while, so some things came together.

Speaker 1: 44:59

So I appreciate you doing this and thanks to everyone else. I'm sure Mike and or Naomi will both be here soon on one of these episodes. So thanks again for all the input and support from everybody and ideas and suggestions for topics and or guests. And, as always, if you have a topic you want to suggest or a guest that you want to suggest, including yourself, feel free to reach out to us through marketingopscom or through the Slack channel or even on LinkedIn. Until next time, everybody, bye now.

Speaker 2: 45:28

See you guys.