WEBVTT
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And going after those top of the
pyramid where you know it's not just an
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integration, it's really a joint solution, right, and there's joint go to
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market and the value prop, the
combined value prop. That's part art and
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part science, but that's spending a
ton of time on that joint value prop.
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The the returns you can get at
the top of the pyramid there are
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just Hughes. ECOSYSTEM ACES is a
podcast dedicated to helping business leaders unleash the
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full potential of the ecosystem economy.
Whether you're just getting started with ecosystem partners
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or you're looking for advanced strategies and
tactics, this podcast is for you.
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Let's get into the show. Hey, welcome, welcome back to another episode
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of Ecosystem Asas thanks for thanks for
joining us everyone, and Gosh, I'm
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super excited to welcome Brian Allison.
Brian, welcome. Thank you, chip.
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It's great to be here. I'm
excited to have the opportunity to spend
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some time with you today. Great. So a lot of interesting topics we're
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going to talk about. Brian is
vice president global alliances and channels. That
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snow software and then in that role
for about a year. Brian, you've
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had just a really interesting background that
I know our listeners will really like to
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hear from a lot of a lot
of different topics, a lot of years,
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it says, go early on for
or I think like ten years.
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Yeah, and then with comball,
comball for you for three years, and
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and then drip and now with snow
software. So you've had, you know,
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both. You know, large company
experience. Small Company experience is sort
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of in between. So just really
looking forward to to this conversation. Great,
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yeah, good, good. So
why don't we start? Start there
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and and let's talk a little bit
about snow. Obviously that's, yeah,
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a top of mine for you these
days. Tell us a little bit about
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what you and your team are up
to at snow. Yeah, we refer
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to ourselves as the YETTI's, right, the snow Yetti's, and, as
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you and I were talking about earlier, snow is also something dear to my
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heart in that I live in perk
city. We don't have much snow yet,
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but yes, so I feel like
I'm in a good place at snow
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software. We Are we're transforming our
partner go to market in in many,
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many ways. You know, Snow
Hugely Successful Company in the sense that there
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aren't too many SASS companies that make
it into that rarefied air of a hundred
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million plus in terms of rr.
We have eclipse that level. We have
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much bigger aspirations and to really get
to those next level of aspirations. We
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talked about internally and and chip,
you and I talked about a little bit.
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To write. What got us,
what got us here, isn't going
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to get us there right. And
so some of the fundamental things that we've
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laid down with our partner program really
starts with what is the purpose of partners
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right? You know a lot of
people oh yeah, partners, partners,
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and whether it's a CFO or a
cro or you know people in the partners.
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Yeah, we want to do partners, but you know that. I
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think it's super, super important to
get dialed into as an executive team.
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What do you really want partners to
do for the business? Do you want
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them, for example, to just
generate incremental bookings relative to what your direct
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sales team is doing? Do you
want them? Do you want them more
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integrated into the business model? In
terms of what we talked about it snow,
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in terms of coverage capacity and capability
to extend snows business model, right,
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or, you know, do you
want them to run completely independently?
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So I think that's a super important
watershed. You know, candidly at Cisco,
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Cisco Runs a Very Well Oiled machine
and sometimes you which I will always
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appreciate a lot the opportunity to be
there, but until you kind of Step
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Out of that Oil oiled machine,
you don't realize kind of some of the
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inherent assumptions that are built into that
business model and the challenges and the and
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the clarity that you need to make
up front with the executive team and candidly
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the board of directors about, Hey, we're going to be investing in partners
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and you know why, right,
and because there are different versions of what
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partners can contribute to a business.
So that's the first thing that we've spent
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a lot of time on and I
feel really good about that. The seventh
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thing then, is what is what's
the role of the partner in the context
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of the partner program and I think, I think the world is changing quickly,
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but when I see things like,
you know, partners are resellers or
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integrators or an alliance partner, I
kind of I candidate Bristle at that a
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little bit in the sense that those
are those are business models, right,
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whereas we we at snow, when
we look at our partners wed and kind
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of how we categorize them, so
to speak, but we don't necessarily look
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at their business models. We look
at how they serve the customer, right.
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So, you know, in the
context of the customer being successful from
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you know, inquiry to to success
with snow product and and services. That's
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those are the lenses we look at
and terms of and in terms of structuring
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the partner program in terms of designing, in terms of what we want partners
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to do, is again how they
serve customers. On that that continuum,
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that's been a big part of what
we do. So I think the we're
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on that journey of coverage and capacity
and capability and then the partner program like
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I said, right, where where
they're serving customers and and know a lot
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of a lot of companies are doing
a super good job with this today.
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But you know, I can't emphasize
enough that customer success is the ultimate outcome
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here, right. It's not the
it's not the economic transaction. And so
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we're spending a lot of time,
which I think a lot of other really
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good companies in the world are,
in terms of really working with our partners.
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In terms of customer success, I
think that digital marketing is another thing
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that get, is getting more attention
and should get more I this really came
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to light to me in terms of
clarity when I was over at dripped for
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a while. Right as a you
know, I've been in the IT world
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forever, you know, I go
into this Marcom Martek world, right,
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which is incredibly sophisticated. I had
no appreciation for how digitally sophisticated that world
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is. But then it also reflects
the fact that buyers today they're making they're
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making two thirds of their buyers journey
digitally. You know, they don't even
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want to talk to a salesperson until
they get well into the journey. So
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in terms of structuring things with partners, that is also very, very important.
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And then lastly, and and it's
interesting that this is kind of held
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true for there aren't too many things
that hold true for for more than a
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couple of years, it seems.
But you know, managed services. I
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first started seeing this trend at Cisco, where, you know, the partners
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that were being most successful in the
data center space and candidly acquiring other people
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where the partners who are doing managed
services right, and and then they were
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also the fastest data center growth with
us. Well, you know, fast
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forward a number of years. Here
we see the same phenomenon in terms of
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our best partners and our best customer
outcomes are around partners who are delivering that
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managed service and that's super good for
them, because everybody wants recurring revenue,
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right, and is super good for
the customers. And so we're not,
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you know, we the the actual
kind of I call it transaction is important,
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but but that whole manage services context
is very important to us and I
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think you're seeing that from, you
know, the stalwarts of the world in
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terms of Cisco and Microsoft as well, right, in terms of that evolution
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of the partner community towards managed services
versus just want, you know, a
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certain type of transaction. Yeah,
that's a lot that. There's a lot
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to do. Double Clicker. Right, it's fantastic. Breath. Let's let's
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go back a little bit to the
beginning of what you were talking about.
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I really like that how you there
are a lot of different ways to think
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about you know how partners engage and
how how they're related to the company,
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if they're sort of embedded or more
distant, a little bit more handsoff,
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where they're sort of doing their own
thing. How, where did you sort
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of come down, as you've,
you know, join snow a year ago
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and had those conversations leader shipping,
the how did you? Where did you
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come down and and how did you
sort of make some of those decisions and
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tradeoffs on how you know where you
where you thought it was right for snow.
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Yeah, I really go back to
my Cisco Heritage on this, because
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Cisco ended up going through the same
journey as well in terms of the role
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of the partner, right, and
I think Microsoft does a world class job
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at this as well and has for
a long, long time, and but
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it's under appreciated. And what I
mean by that is that the best results
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from working with partners comes when you
look at partners as as an integrated part
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of your business model, right.
And so when I talked about coverage,
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capacity and capability, right, there's
no company in the world that can do
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all that right. And so as
you're looking at your capacity models and your
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looking, and this is this is
from presales all the way through to customer
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success. Right. It's not,
you know, it used to just be
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associated with that selling transaction, but
it really is. The whole business is
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then, you know, a very
deliberate integration of okay, we could do
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this directly or we can ask our
partners to do this, and I think
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that's I still that's where I come
back to in terms of where, you
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know, lots of companies like to
talk about getting leverage right from from partners.
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And if you really want leverage that
they have to be integrated into your
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business model, planning from those three
C's, and it's interesting, just a
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little side note, you don't kind
of some companies when I talk about,
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you know, getting from point a
to point be, in terms of what
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got you here won't get you there. Like, you know, kind of
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a look in the mirror test,
right, because some Oh, you know,
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I'm doing ninety percent of my business
through partners, and so we're doing
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great, right, but kind of
the mirror test you can take is okay,
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well, you know, look past
your partner share a little bit and
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look at what role your partners are
explicitly taking you. Because if your sellers,
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if the vendor sellers are still closing
all the deals and you know,
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the partners are kind of just,
I'll call it fulfillment, so to speak.
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You're not really getting any level virs
from partners. Right, right.
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You know, how do you look
at the sale cycle and think about have
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we partnered with partners to do specific
things throughout the sale cycle? To me,
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that's kind of, if you want
to again do that list, litmus
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test or mirror test about how effective
your your partner go to market is.
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That's a that can be a good, good thing to to look at,
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and so I might I love this, you know, really embedded, embedding
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the partners into your into your into
your business model. I think that.
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I agree. I think it's it's
it's really critical, because then it also
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it becomes part of the whole business
strategy and then it can fies down through
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the whole organization. It does,
it does, and and again that's where
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I was so fortunate to I mean, Cisco is world class at that,
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right, so is Microsoft, so
our number of other companies. But then,
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you know, the benefit of that
is, you know, on a
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daytoday basis, for sure, but
every company and every industry is going to
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encounter challenging times, right, and
when you have that partner community that really
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trusts you and that no in is
knows you're there for them and vice versa,
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and makes it so much easier for
the company and those extended partners to
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navigate those trying times and get through
those challenge ches. Yeah, yeah,
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let's talk a little bit about again. In your sort of that you're the
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first part of the how you described, you know, partnering a snow,
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and I love how you said that
you don't really categorize partners into narrow types.
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It's more about the kinds of activities
that they're doing and how they're delivering
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to customers. Totally agree because,
Gosh, I mean these days, you
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know, is ISMs are becoming like
the resellers and and as I I mean
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let the creating their own Ip,
like everybody started doing a lot of different
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thing. Everyone's moving into everybody else's
territory, right, right, yeah,
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types anymore. How do you thrite? How do you see? How do
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you see? How does that happen
at how do you see that? It
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snow, well, how we do
it. It's snow is well. And
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again I would out, you know
again, maybe some background also, at
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least where we're at today, right. We you know. So you know,
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based on how a partner serves the
customer, you can kind of come
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up with some categories, but I
think you know, one thing that I
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think is important is that you know
you got to pick your priorities in terms
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of as you're launching a new partner
program like, how many partner types can
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you realistically address? Right, and
so we've been very, very focused on
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in the context of our partner program
I'm just one partner type, right,
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and we call that a solution partner, and that part how we define that,
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is a partner who can who can
service the customer and engage the customer
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from inquiry to success. Right.
And certainly there are other partner types who
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will only maybe do services or only
do you know, maybe up front demandain
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in the pipeline. But but we're
really focused on that that category of what
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we call solution partners who serve everything. Increasingly we are getting into the alliances,
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kind of technology partnerships as well,
and I think that's kind of another
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partner type, but that is what
we are focused on right now. And
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then when it comes to the economic
transaction, you know whether it's a referral
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or a rest, we really don't
care right. That's that's completely up to
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the partner and how sheer he wants
to do business. Our main our main
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priorities, like I said, is
serving that customer throughout the life cycle.
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How do you think about incentives in
those models? And some partners are looking
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for their you know, they're looking
for some kind of you know, cuts
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a but some are just like no, not really, we just like to
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take the services. And how do
you sort of manage that tension with with
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partners? Yeah, we spend we
do. We spend a lot of time
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on that. So we do want
our partners to be actively looking for snow
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opera. Again, whether there are
referral partner or kind of resell from an
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economic transaction, we want them to
be engaging with snow and the good news
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is they often have solutions around that
right, and so we do up front.
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I'll call it deal registration, right, you know, oftentimes for principally
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for the partners who are doing resell
transactions, but for the partners who are
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doing referral transactions, we have a
way to do that as well. You
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know, to your point, there
are some more services oriented partners who maybe
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don't want that up front. But
again, our focus right now is on
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is on those what we call those
solution partners who do want to service the
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the customer from inquiry to success.
So then the other part of this incentives
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that we're getting into then, you
know snow, is making are very strong
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transition to this ass you know,
business model. And so you know that
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cut. You know the Nurr numbers. You know in Ourr and and renewal,
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everything that flows into to nurr basically. And are are on terms of
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retention and upsell and Cross cell where
we we want that customer to be successful
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and growing. So that's another area
where we look at incentives, for sure.
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Yeah, so you're measuring that with
partners? Yes, we are.
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Yep, Yep, absolutely. Yeah, because, and that's again part of
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you know, I talked about being
a business, part of the business mom
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I mean that's what we expect of
our business and that's what we expect of
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our functional team. So, you
know, we want our partners to be
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explicitly aligned in that journey with us. Yeah, yeah, so your you
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you both win. Right. Yeah. No, absolutely, and again going
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back to you know, it's about
the customer, right, it's about delivering,
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for that is, I said,
absolutely what it's about. Yeah,
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yeah, Yep, Hey, Brian, let's talk a little bit about I
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love to and you know I talked
a little bit about this at the beginning
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the you know, with your experience
both at large companies and kind of every
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every size company, high growth,
small companies. One of the things that
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I think is really interesting is sort
of your perspective on you know, when
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partnering at US at the smaller level, is looks like one thing, right,
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but then as you have breaths to
get to, you know, like
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a hundred million to a billion kind
of yeah, it's a whole different kind
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of thing. You have to have
a different mindset. Tell me a little
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bit about your thinking, thinking there. Yeah, tell you what I kind
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of observed, right, you know, certainly think you and I discuss there
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there. I'll call them the UNICORNS. Right, not necessarily from a valuation
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standpoint, but sometimes times they are
who get everything dialed in right the first
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time, right, and they can
scale that from, you know, from
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zero to a billion dollars. Right. Those people are, those companies are
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very rare. Right. They probably
get about seventy percent of the publicity.
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But you know, most companies that's
not their journey, right. Wasn't Cisco's
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journey. Was a Microsoft journey.
Most companies have to make a conscious transition.
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Right. So in my personal opinion, you know, if you're trying
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to grow to a business to a
hundred million dollars, you you know you're
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super, super scrappy and your sales
teams and your marketing teams and your your
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you know you're touching the customer pretty
much throughout the entire engagement cycle, right,
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because you know you've got to you've
got to establish your value prop you've
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got to establish your brand. You're
just trying to, you know, get
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that foothold built right. But there's
some there's some point right, and we
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kind of touched on this a little
bit, where where that changes, right,
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where you know you need to continue
to grow, but you know the
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diminishing turn they're definitely diminishing returns from
an economic standpoint of following that same approach.
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Right. And so that's personally,
that's the like when I look for
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opportunities, those are the transitions I
look for. A right is just the
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cut and you know it could be
a Martek company WHO's, you know,
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ten to fifteen million of rr looking
to grow, or it could be other
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companies. But you know, to
me it's kind of that hundred million dollar
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range is kind of the really,
really important range and in with aspirations to
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go to a billion. And so
you get you know, as a company.
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And so it's not it's not a
partner decision right. You know people
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will think it's a partner. It's
really a it comes back to that business
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model decision right in terms of how
do I get partners involved in my business
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model? And that's getting much easier
said than done right, and so that's
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that's to me, that's that conscious
transition point that companies need to think about
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right and and or, you know, consciously decide this is the type of
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partnering I'm going to do. But
you know, most of them you get
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caught up in just that channel share
number without really digging into the details of
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how am I getting efficiencies out of
my business modeling? And you know,
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candidly it's there's a control issue there. You know, you you're scrappy.
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You grow to a successful business,
you wouldn't you know what you can control
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directly and you want to keep that
control, but you have to let that
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control go a little bit. You
have to set very clear your expectations about
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what you're trying to accomplish. But
it's just like growing, you know,
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other parts of you can't do everything
yourself anymore. Right, right. And
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so getting that in place. So
what are some of the things that you
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as you start to relinquish some of
that control? You know, business leaders
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like to know what's going on.
Right. Yeah, like control. What
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are some of the things? Is
it systems measurement, like? What are
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what are the things that, yeah, to put in place to make that
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transition? Yeah, well, I
think the first thing is is a really
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good agreement with the CFO in terms
of, you know, what return am
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I getting on this money? Because
sheer he in in the traditional capacity planning
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models, right. They you know, that's what they understand a lot of
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the times and it's pretty black and
white. So again it's said it.
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You know what what is the it's
just like any other investment, right,
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in terms of being really clear and
what what's the company? You know,
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what's the opportunity cost associated with between
continuing to do it yourself versus investing in
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partner. So I think that's a
super, super important part of things.
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And then change management. Change management
becomes so important because can you hug?
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I mean the company is absolutely successful. It's not saying the company has been
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doing the wrong things. It's more
about, you know, to change,
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because you know, the one thing
constant in this world is change, right,
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and and so getting people to buy
into hey, we know this has
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been good, but to go to
this next level, you know, and
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this part of the sales cycle,
we want partners to do the demos in
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the box or we want partners to
do configuration and quote or you know those
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kind of things. And and I
think then, also with businesses of that
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size, then as segmentation and countries, right, is that you know,
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they're not all the same. So
you have to get really granular in your
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business model in terms of a goodness
is sometimes just a very appreciative of in
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terms of learning that. Let's just
go a is you know, what that
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partner business model is for an enterprise
segment is probably not the same partner business
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model that you want for the mid
market. Right, what that partner business
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model is for, you know,
certain countries is may not be the same
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business model that you want for,
you know, the United States or the
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UK or something. So it's about
getting very granular and then and then managing
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that change. But it is absolutely
change management. For sure interesting and you've
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certainly been through it because you've been
with some some high growth, high growth
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organization and build like just huge does, even inside Cisco, right. You
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built, you built a business from
Zeroda. Yeah, well, we were
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very fortunate on that. We caught
a rocket ship with with UCS. But
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you know, it was kind of
the early days of the ecosystem actually.
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And again, those things are we
know, whether it's the ecosystem of a
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in the cloud today or whether it's
the ecosystem of platforms, the key building
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blocks are still the same in terms
of you know, you get leverage by
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partnering with people, Customers by solutions. They don't buy products, right,
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and that's what we really caught the
tiger by the tail on in terms of,
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you know, Cisco plus vm where? Or Cisco Plus Microsoft or Cisco
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Plus Net? You Know Flex Pot, I mean flex pot is still going
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strong, right. Yeah, and
and and the customer wanted that integrated solution.
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And you know, what we were
able to do is then create with
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our partners that integrated go to market, right. So you know, Cisco
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Plus Net APP is one one story
and one value prop and one integrated set
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of of certifications, right, and
and those principles and then and then you
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know the in so that, yeah, just very much holds true in many
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cases to to the ecosystems of today. Yeah, how do you think about
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those? Creating joint solutions with with
partners? You know, certainly you've talking
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about that kind of activity with Cisco
and and I know you've done it with
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other partners as well, with other
companies as well. How about it at
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snow? Is that you mentioned?
That's maybe a little more nascent, but
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tell me about how you're how you're
thinking about that, for you know,
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is it something that's customer driven,
like it's customers are asking for something,
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or is it something where you look
at a market and start to say,
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Hey, let's go after this,
or maybe they'll know? Well, I
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think it's but I think it's a
little bit of both and it's certainly should
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be part of one's business model as
well, because you know, at snow,
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right, we announced a very good
and strong partnership of BMC in the
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spring that we're very, very excited
about and we've got a number of new
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ones coming in the pipe. But
if I kind of go back to maybe
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drip, and you know again that
platform experience and even you know comvolt somewhat.
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But you know now it's all about
Apis, right. So you know
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in the software world it's all about
Apis and we want to do we want
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to integrate our APIS and you know
that's great and that should be customer driven.
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But you know that's kind of the
I think of a pyramid in this
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context, right. You know,
just the API integrations are kind of the
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bottom of the pyramid, right,
and you know that's kind of a reference
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point for partners or for customers to
go to. But and so that's you
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want to do that, but I
think you want to be careful about I
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mean you you need to do that, but it's the top of the pyramid
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where you know there's an eight twenty
rule and a lot of parts of life,
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right, and you know you'll get
eighty percent of your bookings probably from
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those partnerships at the top of the
pyramid, right, and those partnerships don't
355
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look like the partnerships at the bottom
of the pyramid and they shouldn't write.
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And so you know, it's about
really understanding where your business is going,
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where your customers are going, and
going after those top of the pyramid where
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you know it's not just an integration, it's really a joint solution, right,
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and there's joint go to market and
you're coming out and the value prop,
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that combined value prop that's part art
and part science, but that's spending
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a ton of time on that joint
value prop. The the returns you can
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get at the top of the pyramid
there are just huge. So, you
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know, I would encourage anybody who's
building out that ecosystem approach. For sure,
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you want to do the bottom of
the pyramid, but you know,
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for Your Business, you and where
you're probably want to spend most of your
366
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time is. You know what are
those joint solutions at the top of the
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pyramid and spend most of your time
there. M Yeah, good, good
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advice. Good Advice. Hey,
Brian, this has been fantastic. I
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think you know, before we we
wrap up here, something that I like
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to ask folks is, and you've
talked about a lot of your your experience
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already, but anything that sort of
has stuck with you that's helped you,
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you know, really have the success
that you've had, any kind of advice
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00:29:23.880 --> 00:29:29.559
that you've received or or something along
the way that's that's just really worked for
374
00:29:29.640 --> 00:29:33.240
you. You could want to share
with with with our audience that are also
375
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kind of working through this process of
working with partners. Yeah, yeah,
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yeah, I feel, I want
to just feel, incredibly fortunate and blessed
377
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to have the experiences that I've had, and I would say that listening,
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to making the time, dedicating the
time to listen to your partners and your
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customers number one. Right and again, a lot of people were a customer
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driven company and you gotta again,
you got to do your mirror tests sometimes
381
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in terms of am I really spending
it, because it's so easy to get
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00:30:06.579 --> 00:30:08.569
caught up in other things. You
know, I've found that if you really
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really listen to customers, and and
I mean listen right, not pitching them
384
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right, listening to them, they
will tell you where the market is going
385
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and they will tell you the keys
to success in terms of how to work
386
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:26.480
with them. That would be my
my one thing. And then the secondly
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second thing is we talked about it
in a lot of places I've been that
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that partners is a team sport,
right, and you know, partner teams
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00:30:36.829 --> 00:30:41.829
and partners don't succeed without every part
of the company being part of that.
390
00:30:42.029 --> 00:30:48.750
So collaboration and respect for other people
than getting everybody on the same page.
391
00:30:48.750 --> 00:30:52.779
Again, that that one team monitor
that we talked about super important as well.
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00:30:53.299 --> 00:30:56.339
Yeah, I like that, I
think. I mean it's so true
393
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that partnering is is the kind.
It's a part of the business that literally
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00:31:03.299 --> 00:31:07.490
crosses all parts of the business.
It's not it's not nearrow thing. It's
395
00:31:07.569 --> 00:31:12.769
the crume. It's everything from product
to go to market, servitically and all
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00:31:12.890 --> 00:31:18.049
that. It's got a it's got
a really deliver across all those all those
397
00:31:18.369 --> 00:31:22.880
dimensions. Yeah, no, absolutely, Yep. Yeah, Hey, Brian,
398
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this has been fantastic. Thank you
so much for for spending some time
399
00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:33.269
with us and sharing your experiences.
And if someone wants to reach out to
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00:31:33.309 --> 00:31:37.549
you, what's a good way to
connect with you? Yeah, Linkedin,
401
00:31:37.990 --> 00:31:44.750
Brian Allison was snow software and any
HAP would be again welcome the I love
402
00:31:44.910 --> 00:31:48.380
the I love the partnering world.
It's where I been for a while and
403
00:31:48.579 --> 00:31:52.380
have no plans to change. So
would welcome the opportunity to talk about the
404
00:31:52.500 --> 00:31:56.460
partner world, for sure, with
anybody. Fantastic, Brian. Thank you
405
00:31:56.779 --> 00:32:01.569
and really appreciate you. You taken
the time and and thank you all for
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00:32:02.250 --> 00:32:07.890
for for joining another episode of ecosystem
ass and and with that, chip rodgers
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00:32:08.569 --> 00:32:13.809
see what workspan and for Brian Allison. Thanks for joining us and we'll see
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you next time. Thanks all very
job. Chip Workspan is the category leader
409
00:32:17.720 --> 00:32:24.319
for Ecosystem Cloud, where alliance,
channel and ecosystem leaders connect cocreate co,
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00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:31.069
market co cell measure and scale with
their ecosystem partners in a single secure network
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00:32:31.269 --> 00:32:37.230
to grow business together. To learn
more, visit workspancom. You've been listening
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to ecosystem aces. To ensure that
you never miss an episode, subscribe to
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the show in your favorite podcast player. Thanks so much for listening. Until
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next time,
1
00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:04.519
And going after those top of the
pyramid where you know it's not just an
2
00:00:04.519 --> 00:00:09.150
integration, it's really a joint solution, right, and there's joint go to
3
00:00:09.310 --> 00:00:13.669
market and the value prop, the
combined value prop. That's part art and
4
00:00:13.830 --> 00:00:18.429
part science, but that's spending a
ton of time on that joint value prop.
5
00:00:18.670 --> 00:00:22.500
The the returns you can get at
the top of the pyramid there are
6
00:00:22.660 --> 00:00:28.820
just Hughes. ECOSYSTEM ACES is a
podcast dedicated to helping business leaders unleash the
7
00:00:28.859 --> 00:00:34.420
full potential of the ecosystem economy.
Whether you're just getting started with ecosystem partners
8
00:00:34.619 --> 00:00:38.850
or you're looking for advanced strategies and
tactics, this podcast is for you.
9
00:00:39.329 --> 00:00:44.490
Let's get into the show. Hey, welcome, welcome back to another episode
10
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of Ecosystem Asas thanks for thanks for
joining us everyone, and Gosh, I'm
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super excited to welcome Brian Allison.
Brian, welcome. Thank you, chip.
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It's great to be here. I'm
excited to have the opportunity to spend
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some time with you today. Great. So a lot of interesting topics we're
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going to talk about. Brian is
vice president global alliances and channels. That
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snow software and then in that role
for about a year. Brian, you've
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had just a really interesting background that
I know our listeners will really like to
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hear from a lot of a lot
of different topics, a lot of years,
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it says, go early on for
or I think like ten years.
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Yeah, and then with comball,
comball for you for three years, and
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and then drip and now with snow
software. So you've had, you know,
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both. You know, large company
experience. Small Company experience is sort
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of in between. So just really
looking forward to to this conversation. Great,
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yeah, good, good. So
why don't we start? Start there
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and and let's talk a little bit
about snow. Obviously that's, yeah,
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a top of mine for you these
days. Tell us a little bit about
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what you and your team are up
to at snow. Yeah, we refer
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to ourselves as the YETTI's, right, the snow Yetti's, and, as
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you and I were talking about earlier, snow is also something dear to my
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heart in that I live in perk
city. We don't have much snow yet,
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but yes, so I feel like
I'm in a good place at snow
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software. We Are we're transforming our
partner go to market in in many,
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many ways. You know, Snow
Hugely Successful Company in the sense that there
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aren't too many SASS companies that make
it into that rarefied air of a hundred
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million plus in terms of rr.
We have eclipse that level. We have
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much bigger aspirations and to really get
to those next level of aspirations. We
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talked about internally and and chip,
you and I talked about a little bit.
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To write. What got us,
what got us here, isn't going
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to get us there right. And
so some of the fundamental things that we've
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laid down with our partner program really
starts with what is the purpose of partners
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right? You know a lot of
people oh yeah, partners, partners,
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and whether it's a CFO or a
cro or you know people in the partners.
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Yeah, we want to do partners, but you know that. I
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think it's super, super important to
get dialed into as an executive team.
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What do you really want partners to
do for the business? Do you want
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them, for example, to just
generate incremental bookings relative to what your direct
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sales team is doing? Do you
want them? Do you want them more
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integrated into the business model? In
terms of what we talked about it snow,
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in terms of coverage capacity and capability
to extend snows business model, right,
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or, you know, do you
want them to run completely independently?
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So I think that's a super important
watershed. You know, candidly at Cisco,
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Cisco Runs a Very Well Oiled machine
and sometimes you which I will always
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appreciate a lot the opportunity to be
there, but until you kind of Step
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Out of that Oil oiled machine,
you don't realize kind of some of the
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inherent assumptions that are built into that
business model and the challenges and the and
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the clarity that you need to make
up front with the executive team and candidly
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the board of directors about, Hey, we're going to be investing in partners
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and you know why, right,
and because there are different versions of what
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partners can contribute to a business.
So that's the first thing that we've spent
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a lot of time on and I
feel really good about that. The seventh
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thing then, is what is what's
the role of the partner in the context
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of the partner program and I think, I think the world is changing quickly,
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but when I see things like,
you know, partners are resellers or
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integrators or an alliance partner, I
kind of I candidate Bristle at that a
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little bit in the sense that those
are those are business models, right,
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whereas we we at snow, when
we look at our partners wed and kind
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of how we categorize them, so
to speak, but we don't necessarily look
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at their business models. We look
at how they serve the customer, right.
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So, you know, in the
context of the customer being successful from
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you know, inquiry to to success
with snow product and and services. That's
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those are the lenses we look at
and terms of and in terms of structuring
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the partner program in terms of designing, in terms of what we want partners
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to do, is again how they
serve customers. On that that continuum,
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that's been a big part of what
we do. So I think the we're
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on that journey of coverage and capacity
and capability and then the partner program like
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I said, right, where where
they're serving customers and and know a lot
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of a lot of companies are doing
a super good job with this today.
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But you know, I can't emphasize
enough that customer success is the ultimate outcome
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here, right. It's not the
it's not the economic transaction. And so
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we're spending a lot of time,
which I think a lot of other really
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good companies in the world are,
in terms of really working with our partners.
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In terms of customer success, I
think that digital marketing is another thing
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that get, is getting more attention
and should get more I this really came
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to light to me in terms of
clarity when I was over at dripped for
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a while. Right as a you
know, I've been in the IT world
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forever, you know, I go
into this Marcom Martek world, right,
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which is incredibly sophisticated. I had
no appreciation for how digitally sophisticated that world
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is. But then it also reflects
the fact that buyers today they're making they're
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making two thirds of their buyers journey
digitally. You know, they don't even
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want to talk to a salesperson until
they get well into the journey. So
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in terms of structuring things with partners, that is also very, very important.
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And then lastly, and and it's
interesting that this is kind of held
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true for there aren't too many things
that hold true for for more than a
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couple of years, it seems.
But you know, managed services. I
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first started seeing this trend at Cisco, where, you know, the partners
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that were being most successful in the
data center space and candidly acquiring other people
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where the partners who are doing managed
services right, and and then they were
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also the fastest data center growth with
us. Well, you know, fast
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forward a number of years. Here
we see the same phenomenon in terms of
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our best partners and our best customer
outcomes are around partners who are delivering that
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managed service and that's super good for
them, because everybody wants recurring revenue,
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right, and is super good for
the customers. And so we're not,
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you know, we the the actual
kind of I call it transaction is important,
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but but that whole manage services context
is very important to us and I
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think you're seeing that from, you
know, the stalwarts of the world in
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terms of Cisco and Microsoft as well, right, in terms of that evolution
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of the partner community towards managed services
versus just want, you know, a
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certain type of transaction. Yeah,
that's a lot that. There's a lot
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to do. Double Clicker. Right, it's fantastic. Breath. Let's let's
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go back a little bit to the
beginning of what you were talking about.
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I really like that how you there
are a lot of different ways to think
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about you know how partners engage and
how how they're related to the company,
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if they're sort of embedded or more
distant, a little bit more handsoff,
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where they're sort of doing their own
thing. How, where did you sort
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of come down, as you've,
you know, join snow a year ago
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and had those conversations leader shipping,
the how did you? Where did you
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come down and and how did you
sort of make some of those decisions and
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tradeoffs on how you know where you
where you thought it was right for snow.
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Yeah, I really go back to
my Cisco Heritage on this, because
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Cisco ended up going through the same
journey as well in terms of the role
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of the partner, right, and
I think Microsoft does a world class job
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at this as well and has for
a long, long time, and but
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it's under appreciated. And what I
mean by that is that the best results
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from working with partners comes when you
look at partners as as an integrated part
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of your business model, right.
And so when I talked about coverage,
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capacity and capability, right, there's
no company in the world that can do
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all that right. And so as
you're looking at your capacity models and your
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looking, and this is this is
from presales all the way through to customer
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success. Right. It's not,
you know, it used to just be
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associated with that selling transaction, but
it really is. The whole business is
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then, you know, a very
deliberate integration of okay, we could do
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this directly or we can ask our
partners to do this, and I think
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that's I still that's where I come
back to in terms of where, you
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know, lots of companies like to
talk about getting leverage right from from partners.
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And if you really want leverage that
they have to be integrated into your
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business model, planning from those three
C's, and it's interesting, just a
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little side note, you don't kind
of some companies when I talk about,
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you know, getting from point a
to point be, in terms of what
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got you here won't get you there. Like, you know, kind of
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a look in the mirror test,
right, because some Oh, you know,
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I'm doing ninety percent of my business
through partners, and so we're doing
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great, right, but kind of
the mirror test you can take is okay,
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well, you know, look past
your partner share a little bit and
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look at what role your partners are
explicitly taking you. Because if your sellers,
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if the vendor sellers are still closing
all the deals and you know,
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the partners are kind of just,
I'll call it fulfillment, so to speak.
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You're not really getting any level virs
from partners. Right, right.
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You know, how do you look
at the sale cycle and think about have
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we partnered with partners to do specific
things throughout the sale cycle? To me,
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that's kind of, if you want
to again do that list, litmus
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test or mirror test about how effective
your your partner go to market is.
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That's a that can be a good, good thing to to look at,
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and so I might I love this, you know, really embedded, embedding
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the partners into your into your into
your business model. I think that.
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I agree. I think it's it's
it's really critical, because then it also
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it becomes part of the whole business
strategy and then it can fies down through
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the whole organization. It does,
it does, and and again that's where
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I was so fortunate to I mean, Cisco is world class at that,
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right, so is Microsoft, so
our number of other companies. But then,
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you know, the benefit of that
is, you know, on a
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daytoday basis, for sure, but
every company and every industry is going to
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encounter challenging times, right, and
when you have that partner community that really
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trusts you and that no in is
knows you're there for them and vice versa,
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and makes it so much easier for
the company and those extended partners to
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navigate those trying times and get through
those challenge ches. Yeah, yeah,
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let's talk a little bit about again. In your sort of that you're the
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first part of the how you described, you know, partnering a snow,
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and I love how you said that
you don't really categorize partners into narrow types.
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It's more about the kinds of activities
that they're doing and how they're delivering
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to customers. Totally agree because,
Gosh, I mean these days, you
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know, is ISMs are becoming like
the resellers and and as I I mean
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let the creating their own Ip,
like everybody started doing a lot of different
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thing. Everyone's moving into everybody else's
territory, right, right, yeah,
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types anymore. How do you thrite? How do you see? How do
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you see? How does that happen
at how do you see that? It
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snow, well, how we do
it. It's snow is well. And
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again I would out, you know
again, maybe some background also, at
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least where we're at today, right. We you know. So you know,
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based on how a partner serves the
customer, you can kind of come
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up with some categories, but I
think you know, one thing that I
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think is important is that you know
you got to pick your priorities in terms
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of as you're launching a new partner
program like, how many partner types can
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you realistically address? Right, and
so we've been very, very focused on
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in the context of our partner program
I'm just one partner type, right,
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and we call that a solution partner, and that part how we define that,
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is a partner who can who can
service the customer and engage the customer
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from inquiry to success. Right.
And certainly there are other partner types who
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will only maybe do services or only
do you know, maybe up front demandain
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in the pipeline. But but we're
really focused on that that category of what
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we call solution partners who serve everything. Increasingly we are getting into the alliances,
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kind of technology partnerships as well,
and I think that's kind of another
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partner type, but that is what
we are focused on right now. And
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then when it comes to the economic
transaction, you know whether it's a referral
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or a rest, we really don't
care right. That's that's completely up to
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the partner and how sheer he wants
to do business. Our main our main
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priorities, like I said, is
serving that customer throughout the life cycle.
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How do you think about incentives in
those models? And some partners are looking
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for their you know, they're looking
for some kind of you know, cuts
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a but some are just like no, not really, we just like to
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take the services. And how do
you sort of manage that tension with with
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partners? Yeah, we spend we
do. We spend a lot of time
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on that. So we do want
our partners to be actively looking for snow
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opera. Again, whether there are
referral partner or kind of resell from an
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economic transaction, we want them to
be engaging with snow and the good news
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is they often have solutions around that
right, and so we do up front.
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I'll call it deal registration, right, you know, oftentimes for principally
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for the partners who are doing resell
transactions, but for the partners who are
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doing referral transactions, we have a
way to do that as well. You
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know, to your point, there
are some more services oriented partners who maybe
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don't want that up front. But
again, our focus right now is on
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is on those what we call those
solution partners who do want to service the
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the customer from inquiry to success.
So then the other part of this incentives
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that we're getting into then, you
know snow, is making are very strong
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transition to this ass you know,
business model. And so you know that
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cut. You know the Nurr numbers. You know in Ourr and and renewal,
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everything that flows into to nurr basically. And are are on terms of
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retention and upsell and Cross cell where
we we want that customer to be successful
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and growing. So that's another area
where we look at incentives, for sure.
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Yeah, so you're measuring that with
partners? Yes, we are.
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Yep, Yep, absolutely. Yeah, because, and that's again part of
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you know, I talked about being
a business, part of the business mom
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I mean that's what we expect of
our business and that's what we expect of
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our functional team. So, you
know, we want our partners to be
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explicitly aligned in that journey with us. Yeah, yeah, so your you
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you both win. Right. Yeah. No, absolutely, and again going
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back to you know, it's about
the customer, right, it's about delivering,
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for that is, I said,
absolutely what it's about. Yeah,
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yeah, Yep, Hey, Brian, let's talk a little bit about I
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love to and you know I talked
a little bit about this at the beginning
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the you know, with your experience
both at large companies and kind of every
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every size company, high growth,
small companies. One of the things that
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I think is really interesting is sort
of your perspective on you know, when
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partnering at US at the smaller level, is looks like one thing, right,
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but then as you have breaths to
get to, you know, like
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a hundred million to a billion kind
of yeah, it's a whole different kind
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of thing. You have to have
a different mindset. Tell me a little
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bit about your thinking, thinking there. Yeah, tell you what I kind
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of observed, right, you know, certainly think you and I discuss there
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there. I'll call them the UNICORNS. Right, not necessarily from a valuation
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standpoint, but sometimes times they are
who get everything dialed in right the first
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time, right, and they can
scale that from, you know, from
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zero to a billion dollars. Right. Those people are, those companies are
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very rare. Right. They probably
get about seventy percent of the publicity.
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But you know, most companies that's
not their journey, right. Wasn't Cisco's
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journey. Was a Microsoft journey.
Most companies have to make a conscious transition.
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Right. So in my personal opinion, you know, if you're trying
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to grow to a business to a
hundred million dollars, you you know you're
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super, super scrappy and your sales
teams and your marketing teams and your your
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you know you're touching the customer pretty
much throughout the entire engagement cycle, right,
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because you know you've got to you've
got to establish your value prop you've
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got to establish your brand. You're
just trying to, you know, get
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that foothold built right. But there's
some there's some point right, and we
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kind of touched on this a little
bit, where where that changes, right,
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where you know you need to continue
to grow, but you know the
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diminishing turn they're definitely diminishing returns from
an economic standpoint of following that same approach.
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Right. And so that's personally,
that's the like when I look for
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opportunities, those are the transitions I
look for. A right is just the
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cut and you know it could be
a Martek company WHO's, you know,
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ten to fifteen million of rr looking
to grow, or it could be other
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companies. But you know, to
me it's kind of that hundred million dollar
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range is kind of the really,
really important range and in with aspirations to
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go to a billion. And so
you get you know, as a company.
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And so it's not it's not a
partner decision right. You know people
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will think it's a partner. It's
really a it comes back to that business
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model decision right in terms of how
do I get partners involved in my business
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model? And that's getting much easier
said than done right, and so that's
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that's to me, that's that conscious
transition point that companies need to think about
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right and and or, you know, consciously decide this is the type of
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partnering I'm going to do. But
you know, most of them you get
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caught up in just that channel share
number without really digging into the details of
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how am I getting efficiencies out of
my business modeling? And you know,
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candidly it's there's a control issue there. You know, you you're scrappy.
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You grow to a successful business,
you wouldn't you know what you can control
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directly and you want to keep that
control, but you have to let that
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control go a little bit. You
have to set very clear your expectations about
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what you're trying to accomplish. But
it's just like growing, you know,
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other parts of you can't do everything
yourself anymore. Right, right. And
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so getting that in place. So
what are some of the things that you
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as you start to relinquish some of
that control? You know, business leaders
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like to know what's going on.
Right. Yeah, like control. What
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are some of the things? Is
it systems measurement, like? What are
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what are the things that, yeah, to put in place to make that
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transition? Yeah, well, I
think the first thing is is a really
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good agreement with the CFO in terms
of, you know, what return am
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I getting on this money? Because
sheer he in in the traditional capacity planning
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models, right. They you know, that's what they understand a lot of
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the times and it's pretty black and
white. So again it's said it.
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You know what what is the it's
just like any other investment, right,
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in terms of being really clear and
what what's the company? You know,
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what's the opportunity cost associated with between
continuing to do it yourself versus investing in
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partner. So I think that's a
super, super important part of things.
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And then change management. Change management
becomes so important because can you hug?
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I mean the company is absolutely successful. It's not saying the company has been
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doing the wrong things. It's more
about, you know, to change,
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because you know, the one thing
constant in this world is change, right,
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and and so getting people to buy
into hey, we know this has
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been good, but to go to
this next level, you know, and
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this part of the sales cycle,
we want partners to do the demos in
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the box or we want partners to
do configuration and quote or you know those
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kind of things. And and I
think then, also with businesses of that
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size, then as segmentation and countries, right, is that you know,
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they're not all the same. So
you have to get really granular in your
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business model in terms of a goodness
is sometimes just a very appreciative of in
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terms of learning that. Let's just
go a is you know, what that
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partner business model is for an enterprise
segment is probably not the same partner business
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model that you want for the mid
market. Right, what that partner business
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model is for, you know,
certain countries is may not be the same
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business model that you want for,
you know, the United States or the
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UK or something. So it's about
getting very granular and then and then managing
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that change. But it is absolutely
change management. For sure interesting and you've
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certainly been through it because you've been
with some some high growth, high growth
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organization and build like just huge does, even inside Cisco, right. You
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built, you built a business from
Zeroda. Yeah, well, we were
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very fortunate on that. We caught
a rocket ship with with UCS. But
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you know, it was kind of
the early days of the ecosystem actually.
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And again, those things are we
know, whether it's the ecosystem of a
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in the cloud today or whether it's
the ecosystem of platforms, the key building
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blocks are still the same in terms
of you know, you get leverage by
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partnering with people, Customers by solutions. They don't buy products, right,
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and that's what we really caught the
tiger by the tail on in terms of,
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you know, Cisco plus vm where? Or Cisco Plus Microsoft or Cisco
321
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Plus Net? You Know Flex Pot, I mean flex pot is still going
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strong, right. Yeah, and
and and the customer wanted that integrated solution.
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And you know, what we were
able to do is then create with
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our partners that integrated go to market, right. So you know, Cisco
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Plus Net APP is one one story
and one value prop and one integrated set
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of of certifications, right, and
and those principles and then and then you
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know the in so that, yeah, just very much holds true in many
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cases to to the ecosystems of today. Yeah, how do you think about
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those? Creating joint solutions with with
partners? You know, certainly you've talking
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about that kind of activity with Cisco
and and I know you've done it with
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other partners as well, with other
companies as well. How about it at
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snow? Is that you mentioned?
That's maybe a little more nascent, but
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tell me about how you're how you're
thinking about that, for you know,
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is it something that's customer driven,
like it's customers are asking for something,
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or is it something where you look
at a market and start to say,
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Hey, let's go after this,
or maybe they'll know? Well, I
337
00:26:40.279 --> 00:26:42.799
think it's but I think it's a
little bit of both and it's certainly should
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be part of one's business model as
well, because you know, at snow,
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right, we announced a very good
and strong partnership of BMC in the
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spring that we're very, very excited
about and we've got a number of new
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ones coming in the pipe. But
if I kind of go back to maybe
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drip, and you know again that
platform experience and even you know comvolt somewhat.
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But you know now it's all about
Apis, right. So you know
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in the software world it's all about
Apis and we want to do we want
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to integrate our APIS and you know
that's great and that should be customer driven.
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But you know that's kind of the
I think of a pyramid in this
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context, right. You know,
just the API integrations are kind of the
348
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bottom of the pyramid, right,
and you know that's kind of a reference
349
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point for partners or for customers to
go to. But and so that's you
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want to do that, but I
think you want to be careful about I
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mean you you need to do that, but it's the top of the pyramid
352
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where you know there's an eight twenty
rule and a lot of parts of life,
353
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right, and you know you'll get
eighty percent of your bookings probably from
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those partnerships at the top of the
pyramid, right, and those partnerships don't
355
00:28:00.259 --> 00:28:03.660
look like the partnerships at the bottom
of the pyramid and they shouldn't write.
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And so you know, it's about
really understanding where your business is going,
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where your customers are going, and
going after those top of the pyramid where
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you know it's not just an integration, it's really a joint solution, right,
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and there's joint go to market and
you're coming out and the value prop,
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that combined value prop that's part art
and part science, but that's spending
361
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a ton of time on that joint
value prop. The the returns you can
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get at the top of the pyramid
there are just huge. So, you
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know, I would encourage anybody who's
building out that ecosystem approach. For sure,
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you want to do the bottom of
the pyramid, but you know,
365
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for Your Business, you and where
you're probably want to spend most of your
366
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time is. You know what are
those joint solutions at the top of the
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pyramid and spend most of your time
there. M Yeah, good, good
368
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advice. Good Advice. Hey,
Brian, this has been fantastic. I
369
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think you know, before we we
wrap up here, something that I like
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to ask folks is, and you've
talked about a lot of your your experience
371
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already, but anything that sort of
has stuck with you that's helped you,
372
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you know, really have the success
that you've had, any kind of advice
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that you've received or or something along
the way that's that's just really worked for
374
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you. You could want to share
with with with our audience that are also
375
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kind of working through this process of
working with partners. Yeah, yeah,
376
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yeah, I feel, I want
to just feel, incredibly fortunate and blessed
377
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to have the experiences that I've had, and I would say that listening,
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to making the time, dedicating the
time to listen to your partners and your
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customers number one. Right and again, a lot of people were a customer
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driven company and you gotta again,
you got to do your mirror tests sometimes
381
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in terms of am I really spending
it, because it's so easy to get
382
00:30:06.579 --> 00:30:08.569
caught up in other things. You
know, I've found that if you really
383
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really listen to customers, and and
I mean listen right, not pitching them
384
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right, listening to them, they
will tell you where the market is going
385
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and they will tell you the keys
to success in terms of how to work
386
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:26.480
with them. That would be my
my one thing. And then the secondly
387
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second thing is we talked about it
in a lot of places I've been that
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that partners is a team sport,
right, and you know, partner teams
389
00:30:36.829 --> 00:30:41.829
and partners don't succeed without every part
of the company being part of that.
390
00:30:42.029 --> 00:30:48.750
So collaboration and respect for other people
than getting everybody on the same page.
391
00:30:48.750 --> 00:30:52.779
Again, that that one team monitor
that we talked about super important as well.
392
00:30:53.299 --> 00:30:56.339
Yeah, I like that, I
think. I mean it's so true
393
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that partnering is is the kind.
It's a part of the business that literally
394
00:31:03.299 --> 00:31:07.490
crosses all parts of the business.
It's not it's not nearrow thing. It's
395
00:31:07.569 --> 00:31:12.769
the crume. It's everything from product
to go to market, servitically and all
396
00:31:12.890 --> 00:31:18.049
that. It's got a it's got
a really deliver across all those all those
397
00:31:18.369 --> 00:31:22.880
dimensions. Yeah, no, absolutely, Yep. Yeah, Hey, Brian,
398
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this has been fantastic. Thank you
so much for for spending some time
399
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with us and sharing your experiences.
And if someone wants to reach out to
400
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you, what's a good way to
connect with you? Yeah, Linkedin,
401
00:31:37.990 --> 00:31:44.750
Brian Allison was snow software and any
HAP would be again welcome the I love
402
00:31:44.910 --> 00:31:48.380
the I love the partnering world.
It's where I been for a while and
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00:31:48.579 --> 00:31:52.380
have no plans to change. So
would welcome the opportunity to talk about the
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00:31:52.500 --> 00:31:56.460
partner world, for sure, with
anybody. Fantastic, Brian. Thank you
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00:31:56.779 --> 00:32:01.569
and really appreciate you. You taken
the time and and thank you all for
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00:32:02.250 --> 00:32:07.890
for for joining another episode of ecosystem
ass and and with that, chip rodgers
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00:32:08.569 --> 00:32:13.809
see what workspan and for Brian Allison. Thanks for joining us and we'll see
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00:32:13.849 --> 00:32:17.599
you next time. Thanks all very
job. Chip Workspan is the category leader
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00:32:17.720 --> 00:32:24.319
for Ecosystem Cloud, where alliance,
channel and ecosystem leaders connect cocreate co,
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00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:31.069
market co cell measure and scale with
their ecosystem partners in a single secure network
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00:32:31.269 --> 00:32:37.230
to grow business together. To learn
more, visit workspancom. You've been listening
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00:32:37.309 --> 00:32:42.390
to ecosystem aces. To ensure that
you never miss an episode, subscribe to
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00:32:42.470 --> 00:32:45.339
the show in your favorite podcast player. Thanks so much for listening. Until
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00:32:45.420 --> 00:32:45.819
next time,
