Podcast
Bold Journeys Podcast
Hosted by Rob Spee · EN
All around us, people are overcoming extraordinary challenges. Where do they find the resilience and perseverance to move forward?
At Bold Journeys, we share stories of grit, adventure, and faith from those whose journeys have both tested them and shaped who they've become.
Hosted by Rob Spee, each episode of the podcast explores the resilience it takes to carry on – offering encouragement, perspective, and a reminder of what's possible.
We seek guests who've walked through the fire, whether it's a challenge they chose like climbing Mt. Everest, or a knock-down punch life throws at you.
If you're ready to reflect, grow, and live boldly... you're in the right place.
🎙️New episodes every Tuesday
33episodes
Episodes
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Rob Spee: My 10 Top Lessons on Partnering
Oct 23, 202400:18:03Tap to summarizeI’ve gained and shared a ton of channel smarts over the past 6 years producing 150 episodes of the Channel Journeys podcast. It’s hard to condense all this knowledge into one episode, so I aimed at summarizing the key insights for successful partnering. It’s an almost impossible task given the wealth of knowledge shared by my fantastic guests. It took me awhile to come up with a strategy for finding the top advice from 150 episodes. I started by reviewing all 150 podcast episodes and classifying them based on the core topic. I found they all fell into 17 different categories. The top 5 categories were: Strategy: 27 episodes Partner Management: 25 episodes Trends: 12 episodes Partner Programs: 10 episodes Channel Transformation: 10 episodes I pulled out highlights from my more recent podcasts in these top categories and made sure everything applies just as much today as when I aired the podcast. These insights will help any organization thrive in the partner ecosystem. I’d like to give a very big heartfelt shout-out to the 120 guests who have been on my show. Thank you for joining me on this channel journey! Key Takeaways OK, I couldn’t keep it to just 10. Here are my top 11 lessons learned on successful partnering from the first 150 episodes of the podcast: Partnering is a Company-Wide Strategy: Partnering must be integrated into the entire company’s strategy, including go-to-market, product, marketing, HR, and sales enablement strategies. A standalone partnering function is bound to fail if not supported across the company. Listen to How to Make Partnering a Business Strategy with Jill Rowley Executive Commitment in a Must: Achieving successful partner ecosystem strategies requires strong commitment and understanding from the board and executive C-level leaders. They must appreciate the ecosystem’s benefits and actively engage in ecosystem strategies. Listen to Asher & Chip: Growing Ecosystems Around the Globe Embrace Co-opetition: Collaboration with competitors (co-opetition) is crucial for growth. Companies must adopt a customer’s perspective to provide comprehensive solutions, even if it involves partnering with competitors. Listen to Tiffani Bova: 5 Paths to Consistent Channel Growth Know What Partner Types Your Customers Need: Effective partner management begins with understanding what types of partners are needed and what each type requires to succeed. Creating a partner journey map for each type helps in understanding and improving the partner experience. Listen to Lana King: What Partners do Saas Companies Really Need? Partner Experience Trumps Technology: Winning partners’ hearts and minds is more about providing a great partner experience than having the best technology. Consistent, positive interactions across all company departments foster strong partner relationships. Listen to Crystal Ferreira: How to be a Better Vendor to your Partners Top Performance Requires Effective Partner Management: Driving top partner performance involves recruiting the right partners, cultivating a channel-friendly culture, aligning sales and channel teams, and focusing on the performance and intellectual curiosity of partner managers. Listen to Josh Lewis: Driving Breakthrough Partner Performance Channel Priority has Shifted to Services: The channel is shifting from product sales to services and subscription models. Partners and their vendors must adapt to this change, focusing on customer success to ensure retention and growth. Listen to Jay McBain: Top 5 Ecosystem Plays for 2024 Partners are the Customer Experience: Partners play a crucial role in delivering business outcomes by engaging with customers through the entire journey—from pre-sales to post-sales, implementation, adoption, retention, and expansion. Continuous enablement and strong relationships are essential. Listen to How Partners are Driving Customer Success with Nancy Ridge and Norma Watenpaugh You Cannot Ignore the Marketplaces: The growth in hyperscaler marketplaces (such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud) necessitates vendors to have their products on these platforms. Programs must reward partners for post-sales success and adapt to the new market value of the transaction. Listen to Jay McBain: Top 5 Ecosystem Plays for 2024 It’s Time for Your Modern Ecosystem Partner Program: Building a modern partner program isn’t that difficult. It just involves creating the elements that support your various partner go-to-market motions and putting them into a single program. The program and these elements should be designed from the partners’ perspective, focusing on their success metrics, and ensuring simplicity and efficiency. Listen to Mike Day: How to Build an Ecosystem Partner Program Simplification is Key: Scale back and simplify elements of your program that aren’t providing a great partner experience. Get back to basics, simplify, remove complexity, and then build from there. Apply as much efficiency and automation as you can, with a smart selection of channel technologies. Strip out any technology that is creating too much complexity. Listen to Katie Landaal: Five Ways to Scale Your Partner Business LINKS & RESOURCES Connect with Rob on LinkedIn Try Impartner Partner Management The post Rob Spee: My 10 Top Lessons on Partnering first appeared on Channel Journeys.
Transcribe →How to Build a Booming MSP Program with Dinara Bakirova
Oct 9, 202400:34:18Tap to summarizeThe market for managed services continues to accelerate, but many software vendors are missing out on this huge opportunity. If you’re wondering what it takes to create a game-changing MSP program, this episode is for you. Dinara Bakirova, Director of Partner Experience at Lookout, shares the most important ingredients to their successful MSP program that is generating new partnerships and new revenue streams. You’ll hear the challenges and the new opportunities created while building and launching their MSP program. Key Takeaways Here are the top 10 ingredients in Dinara’s blueprint for a successful MSP program: Start with a Clear Strategy: Before launching an MSP (Managed Service Provider) program, it’s essential to gather internal stakeholders and evaluate existing systems and processes. This ensures that you have a solid foundation and understand what adjustments need to be made. Investment is Key: Significant investment in resources, systems, and processes is crucial for launching and scaling an MSP program successfully. This helps in dealing with the anticipated influx of partners and allows for the effective delivery of promised services. Flexible Commercial Models: Offering flexible payment options, such as annual subscriptions and pay-as-you-go models, caters to different MSP needs and market demands. It’s essential to balance existing business models with new consumption-based models to avoid disrupting ongoing operations. Enablement Programs: Creating a dedicated MSP enablement program is pivotal. This includes online training modules, in-house labs, and NFR (Not For Resale) licenses for hands-on experience. Effective enablement simplifies MSPs’ onboarding and helps them support and resell the product better. Autonomous Provisioning: MSPs value the ability to manage their tenants easily. Building a provisioning portal with automation capabilities is crucial. This empowers MSPs to handle client management independently, reducing manual intervention and increasing efficiency. Dedicated Support: Establishing dedicated MSP support roles, such as strategic engineers and partner managers, ensures that MSPs receive specialized assistance. This dedicated support helps address specific technical and operational challenges faced by MSPs. Scalable Systems: Implementing scalable systems and processes is necessary to accommodate growth. This includes having a robust finance platform, partner enablement systems, and support mechanisms that can handle the evolving demands of an expanding MSP base. Direct and Indirect Engagement Rules: Clear rules of engagement for both direct and indirect MSPs are essential. This helps in managing the relationship between sales reps, MSPs, and distributors like Pax8, ensuring transparency and minimizing conflicts. Iterative Improvement: Continually evolving systems and business processes is crucial, even for companies that have been channel-first from the start. Adapting to new technologies like AI and responding to market trends helps maintain a competitive edge and meet partner expectations. Customer-Centric Approach: Always consider the perspective of the end-users and partners. Judging your program’s success by the ease of use and satisfaction of your MSPs ultimately leads to better customer experiences and stronger partnerships. LINKS & RESOURCES Connect with Dinara on LinkedIn Hear from Dan Tomaszewski on How to Power Up MSPs Listen to Tony Beller’s 10 Tips for Building a SaaS MSP Channel Try Impartner Partner Management The post How to Build a Booming MSP Program with Dinara Bakirova first appeared on Channel Journeys.
Transcribe →10 Tips for Successful GSI Partnerships with Raj Gupta
Sep 25, 202400:46:25Tap to summarizeOne of the most rewarding yet most challenging partnerships I’ve seen over my career is working with the massive Global System Integrators, also know as GSIs. Many vendors embark on this journey looking to cash in the attractive potential of multi-million $ sales in the world’s top accounts. Unfortunately, many vendors struggle for years and eventually give up. What is so different about GSIs that makes them such a challenge to work with? And what can you do to capture the power of GSIs? To answer these questions, I turned to Raj Gupta, the head of global partnerships at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). We delved into Raj’s take on partnerships and the nuances of working effectively with TCS. Raj’s insights serve as a comprehensive guide for building successful partnerships with TCS and other GSIs. Key Takeaways Here are the top ten tips I learned from Raj’s experiences and insights: Appreciate the Breadth and Scale of GSIs Founded in 1968, TCS now has nearly 600,000 employees worldwide with close to $30 billion in annual revenues. TCS is the trusted advisor to more than 2,500 clients around the globe, with a 95% repeat business. Understand the Unique Nature of GSIs TCS, like many other Global System Integrators (GSIs), should not be treated like resellers or boutique delivery shops. GSIs function more as brand ambassadors for their partners, leveraging their extensive relationships and industry expertise to amplify the value of partner technologies. Focus on Long-Term Relationships TCS has relationships spanning decades with their clients. To successfully partner with TCS and other GSIs, it’s crucial to align with this long-term vision rather than pursuing short-term gains. Building lasting partnerships based on shared goals and mutual trust is key. Effective Use of Market Development Funds (MDF) Raj advises that market development funds should be strategically used, primarily for joint events and creating solutions integrated with existing platforms. Providing GSIs with MDF can drive mindshare and foster collaborations that ultimately result in significant business growth. Embrace Storytelling Raj shares a compelling story about a young boy’s interaction with Alexa to illustrate the power of technology in everyday life. He stresses the importance of storytelling in conveying the value of your solutions to clients and partners, making complex concepts more relatable and compelling. Align on Shared Goals and Objectives It’s crucial for partners to work in sync with TCS’s internal teams and practices. Creating a joint business plan with clear objectives and regular accountability checks can help ensure both parties are aligned and working towards common goals. Leverage TCS’s Ecosystem TCS has a vast ecosystem of 220 strategic partners that they have been trimming down to focus on quality over quantity, ensuring that partnerships are strategic, scalable, and beneficial across different industry verticals. Vendors should consider how their solution integrates within the GSI’s ecosystem for maximum customer benefit. Importance of Partner Excellence Framework Make sure you understand what’s important in a partnership to your GSIs. TCS uses a Partner Excellence Framework to evaluate and measure partner performance. Key metrics include stability, market presence, openness to collaboration, and the ability to provide significant extensions of funding and resources. Building Heart Share and Mind Share Raj introduces the concept of heart-share (emotional trust) and mind share (cognitive recognition among stakeholders). The goal is to get the mindshare within the GSI organization and within their enterprise customer base. But Raj says that before the mindshare comes the heart-share. Consider Using Funded Heads Having a dedicated person who works to build the heart-share and mindshare within the GSI organization around the globe can have a powerful impact. Raj has seen the pipeline build up very quickly with this approach. Going after the wallet share before gaining heart-share and mindshare can slow down and even break the opportunity. LINKS & RESOURCES Connect with Raj on LinkedIn Hear how GSI’s fit into BeyondTrust’s strategy to Drive Growth with a Partner Ecosystem Try Impartner Partner Management The post 10 Tips for Successful GSI Partnerships with Raj Gupta first appeared on Channel Journeys.
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