111 - Jasmina Muller - Building a Startup Channel

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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis.
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My name is Alex Whitford and I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanix, and this week I'm extremely excited to welcome our special guest, Jasmina.
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How are you doing?
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I'm doing well, alex.
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It's um been a long week, but you know what?
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This is probably the highlight of the week.
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So I'm excited to talk and kind of get to know a little bit more about you and and see what else we can give to the audience yeah, I'm excited.
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I think, uh, it's going to be a really fruitful discussion.
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We're always happy here at partnerships, unravel, to sort of help share our guest expertise, help sort of educate the community.
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Maybe, for the uninitiated, you can give us a little bit of a rundown about who you are and where you've come from definitely so, jasmina muller.
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For those that aren't aware, um, I'm the chief ecosystem officer over at titan cloud storage.
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I've been there for almost a year, which I can't believe.
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I just said it's almost a year.
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So it's been a year, which means time's just going on.
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I've been in the channel for almost eight years.
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I'm actually almost nine.
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I know some people will be like, no, it's probably longer than that, but it's because of my background.
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I came from the direct sales side and I always worked with partners, so I've been with different SaaS companies, been with AI companies, telco, and in that I just kind of grown into the chief ecosystem officer, which I'm sure we'll get into more.
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But loving the job, um, enjoy the role and just everything the channel comes around with it.
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So awesome.
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I think one of the things that I found really interesting about sort of your background, your cv, is you've worked at lots of startups at different stages.
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But I think the thing that I find really interesting about sort of how startup and channel intersects is how do you build a channel when you've got such limited resources and budgets?
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That's got to be a tight sort of recipe that you've got to knit together.
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Yeah, it's probably quite a few things.
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I mean, first and foremost, with Titan Cloud Storage.
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Nobody really knew of us and who we were.
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So, right there, your first thing you've got to think about is brand awareness.
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How are you going to bring the name out there?
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And it's like it's the new kid on the block and for me, I always look at it.
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As you know, I have a passion for selling, but I also have a passion to go out there and go look, here's what, what's happening, here's what's going on.
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And so you take a look at that and go okay, take a step back and, like I've always told some of the leadership in my past, I said you know, I hate to say it, but use me, use my relationships, use what I've done over the years and let's market it that way, use my brand and let's start utilizing it in that manner.
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From a resources perspective, you're definitely wearing multiple hats, hands down multiple hats.
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I was actually saying this to somebody the other day, like so how is it you know being at a startup, now that it's a real, true startup, what are you doing?
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I said, what am I not doing?
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I, physically, am now a marketing person.
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I've never understood how marketing and sales never really interacted well.
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Oh boy, I can appreciate marketing hands down, how much work they do, help with a sales rep or even a channel sales.
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And then you've got a proper fit of partners.
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You've got to make sure, if I'm a startup, your first and foremost, your first thing that's in your head is how are you going to get to market quickly?
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You can't take a look at your typical channel programs where you've already got something going.
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You've got a certain set of partners going, so you've got some revenue.
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Your startup, you're trying to get in that revenue as quickly as possible, because you've got investors coming in saying what are we going to do?
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So proper fit of partners, and that would be the approach of winning fast.
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And why are you going to help them and their business be different from the others?
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Because that's what they're looking for.
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If I'm going to sell you what you know, what do I get out of it?
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It's going to be quick wins, which means faster payout for them.
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You have a definite set of a budget that incorporates everything.
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So now which is the other thing I start laughing at I've now added marketing to my resume and now I'm all of a sudden finance.
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So that right there.
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For those of you guys that know me, this is going to be the funny part Jazz was never good at math.
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So finance comes now and now you've really got to take a look at where are you going to use that money in the best fit, in the best way?
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You're going to have to locally network.
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You don't want to go ahead and just start building everything from everywhere.
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You can't boil the ocean.
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You got to take it and really break it down and say let's just work in this local networking area, build the brand there, instead of going to every single industry event.
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There's no way you're going to be able to go to every event.
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Then your money is gone.
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Once that is established, where you're kind of starting from what I call the center and then out, you'll start to build that brand and your budget will start to increase based off of which events you're bringing in that will go ahead and bring in those partners that will bring in the revenue.
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So I'd say probably those four is the brand awareness, the resources you're wearing, the multiple hats, the proper fit of partners and then the budget.
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Those are the top four things that you got to keep in mind as you're building out the channel with the startup.
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Yeah, I think the sort of ideal partner profile, right, I think that's the thing that so many people misunderstand and it's too loose a definition.
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Or they're trying to acquire so many partners and the operational lag that happens as a result of bringing partners on that aren't going to generate revenue.
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That's a sort of death knell for a new channel.
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Yeah, you've got to be super precise, right, because I think and I sort of love what you're saying there in terms of how do we work backwards from sort of customer need, what's the fastest way that we can generate revenue?
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Because if every partnership I'd ever signed came to fruition right, I'd be driving a much nicer car than the one I have today, because so many of these don't work.
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And they work because not clear expectations, or we've approached the wrong partner, or you're competing at a program level, and I think one of the things that I find interesting about building a channel from a startup's perspective is you're also competing partner program to partner program.
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How do you sort of work around that when you don't have the same benefits and comp structures that maybe more developed programs have?
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So I think a lot of it has to do with kind of like you just mentioned partner profiles you can I mean I can get every partner signed.
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I mean I've built the relationships, but then you're going to have the problem with the resources.
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How are you going to help manage those?
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Because then now, all of a sudden, the partner is like I'm not getting what I need, I'm out.
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And so when you look at it from starting in that in that manner, yes, you can go by relationships, yes, you can go, you know, use your own personal brand and yes, they'll trust you and what have you.
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But you've really got to take a look at how is it going to work from, like we just said, quick wins, making sure that you give the right, proper management to those partners and giving them the tools and resources that are going to be needed for them to start growing.
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If you don't have the proper tools and resources, they're not going to be there and try to sell you.
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I think the other thing is, as you're starting to do these partner profiles and trying to figure out what's the best way to go ahead and move, you got to take it and really just break it into small size pieces.
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You can't, like I said, boil the ocean.
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And then, depending on the type of partnership you have, if you've got and the way I kind of did it was there's so many different types of channel alliances and what have you?
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You've got distribution, you've got your TSTs, you've got your MSPs, you've got all these different types.
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What's going to have to happen is depending on which ones you go with.
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You got to also make sure that those partnerships are going to be managed properly.
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And what are the requirements?
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Because a lot of times people are like oh, I could take four of these partners as quick wins.
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Well, hold on a second.
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Do you have the proper program to be able to provide to those partners?
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Perfect example is we just signed with TD Cynics, largest IT distributor out there.
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They have certain requirements to put you on their line card.
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If you don't have those requirements, then guess what?
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It doesn't matter how many people you have and you know that the money for the revenue can be there.
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It's not going to fit your program.
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So your program is also something that you need to fit with the requirements of the partners that you're choosing.
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So it's like a double-edged sword.
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You can't just say I've got these four and this is what I'm going to go for if you don't have the proper tools.
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And I can imagine, if you get that wrong, you're wasting so much time and money, right, because the one thing about the channel is, while it's hugely scalable, it's not particularly agile when you get something wrong.
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I think maybe one of the bits that I'd love to double click on is how do you set ambitious but achievable growth targets for a program in its early stages, right?
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How are you measuring success, maybe pre even revenue landing?
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Well, I think, first of all, what I noticed is when I first started with the startup, um, they were assuming, in the first 12 months, that there was going to be an increase in sales through the channel.
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And I'm like there's no way you don't have this, this and this and some of those you know they were.
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They were understanding, but I think when we talked about it, we said how about we do this?
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Instead of having an actual revenue target in that first 12 to 18 months, let's actually set KPIs.
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Let's just let's set something that will get us to those revenues in the following year.
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What is it going to take to get to that target?
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So what we did was we said, like I remember, we knew we needed marketing collateral, so we needed to build the right type of marketing, marketing collateral to be able to provide to the partners.
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So that was one set of KPIs, certain you know white sheets.
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Let's say we needed three to four different ones.
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It does take time.
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At that time I didn't realize it, but now that I do and that's the other thing, you kind of learn from your mistakes or your failures in the past, and so marketing cloud will be one, because you're going to have to have these partners be able to understand what you're selling.
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Um, recently I just realized hey, website is good, but it needs to be understandable.
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It needs to be a great partner experience because within that website you're also going to need a deal rich and that's going to have to go to a partner portal.
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So, again, tools and resources to make it easy.
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That could be a KPI as well.
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Partner profiles, like we were talking about.
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You've got to choose the right fit.
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I can sit there.
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I remember my first startup and I said, okay, in my first year I'm going to sign these many partners because in the back of my head I go I got this and I'm going to get paid on it.
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That's my target.
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But then all of a sudden I went, oh, shoot, I don't have the resources to manage it.
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Now what?
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And so the next year was the target with my revenue.
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Well, I was like, oh, we got to pivot.
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So you learn from, kind of like we just said, it doesn't matter how many partners you sign up, it matters which ones are actually going to bring the revenue in and how you can properly manage them.
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And then I think the last one is build KPIs.
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I remember doing this for one of the channel managers build a KPI around industry events.
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When you go to those industry events, what do you got to do?
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You're not just going to go from you know a booth to booth, you're going to schedule meetings.
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How many meetings can you schedule?
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And it's the 80, 20 rule.
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Out of the you know a hundred meetings, you said probably 20 of them are going to be actual ones that will move forward.
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So you minimum like the bite-sized pieces that I was saying.
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Break it down.
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Put some of those KPIs in place that will get you to the following year the actual revenue targets that you're going to get to, and maybe you can give us a little bit of clarity in terms of pivoting from that first year to that second year.
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Do you still have some of those KPIs in place or does it suddenly still just flip to revenue?
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How does that transition happen?
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So every startup I've been to, I've kept those KPIs because, even though there was another company I had worked for it was an AI company they had a channel in place.
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They had, I think out of the 15 or 20 partners, five were active in producing.
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So I had to take that and say, okay, why were the other 10 not producing or why were they kind of just sitting there?
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And a lot of it the feedback was you know, I basically put a survey together and I said, hey, I need you to tell me why aren't you selling this company or why aren't you selling this solution, and a lot of it had to do with the tools, the resources.
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There was only, I think, two channel managers, one of which they were not.
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That's the other thing.
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They couldn't work together very well, and so you've also got to have a team that's there that can take on partners, their business, their dislikes, likes and what have you.
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It's that character and that demeanor that you can work with them.
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But you've got to take a look at what's existing to determine what type of KPI you can still have, because we continue to have a KPI as we had a revenue.
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It was a balance of the two, because you cannot not have a KPI to help you win to that target.
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There's no possible way.
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There's always something there that's changing, and so what I always like to do is I would call it channel 1.0.
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Here's the first set, or the first phase.
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Channel 2.0 is this, and the KPIs would always shift, a little more challenging, but it's because everybody knows your revenue is always going to go up, so you've got to hit the KPI to get to that revenue.
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And so one of the things that I think is so interesting in terms of that rolling movement right it's hey, we've built these partners and the partners are going to bring us lots of leads, and then we're going to close those leads.
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I think one of the things that you also have to work in is that sort of shift of mindset internally, because there is often direct and indirect channel conflict.
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How do you overcome that?
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How do you change that mindset?
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How do you win the hearts and minds?
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God, I can't tell you how many times I've seen this and lived through it.
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I remember certain companies.
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The first thing the partners would say do you have a direct sales team?
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I'm like, oh gosh.
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So in my head it was this was before the term co-sell even was out there.
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And I remember I'm like this is a co-sell.
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I literally was talking about it to myself and I said you know what?
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There's no other way to do this.
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It's gotta be a team approach.
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That's it.
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And kind of like I was saying in the beginning, I I worked on the direct sales, direct sales side for over 20 years.
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I've only been in the channel directly, and I say directly for about eight years and indirectly for over 25.
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The reason why I kind of differentiate the two is when I was on the direct sales side, I always worked with the partner.
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Always I was like why am I going to work harder, work smarter?
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I've got a list of 20.
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Because I was on.
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Why am I going to work harder, work smarter?
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I've got a list of 20, because I was on the global enterprise team.
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I had a list of 20 fortune 500 companies I had to get into and I'm like this is going to take forever.
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I took that list and I went to my top five partners.
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I said have at it.
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First come, first serve, tell me which ones are your customers.
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And of course they're like oh, that's my customer, that's my customer.
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And I'm like perfect, let's go ahead and provide them the solution that I have here.
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And I realized that is the only way to do it.
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And so I took that and I succeeded.
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I've gone through many president's circle trips because of how I worked, and it was then that I'm like okay, one of these days I'm going to be able to move up and try to figure out how this channel really works.
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So, talking about the co-sell mentality, I took that into my first startup and I said look, you guys have always had it separated, and as soon as a partner comes in, you guys freak out and go, nope, it's already my customer.
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Or nope, I'm already working on the opportunity.
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And so I would take a look at it.
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I did a lot of research and it's been in Salesforce or whatever CRM.
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They have 375 days.
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You're going, huh, okay, so what?
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You know what?
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What has come out of this?
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Well, we got to the CTO and we got to here and it's like well, you know what, my partner already has them as a customer.
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Oh, and that's when it hits, when you're looking at a list and you have to go to leadership and saying you've got this list and you guys haven't moved a needle.
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This is how we should work together.
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And then you put a plan in place with the leadership team and you say look, you have to buy into this.
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If you can't buy into it, your reps aren't going to buy into it.
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You have to lead the charge and say here's how we're going to work together.
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And I know in that first company, what we did was like okay, first year, we got to make sure that the commissions, the you know the financial stuff it's basically a hundred hundred Greenfield get them both paid, cause there are some companies that are like well, we've got to do a hit here, hit there.
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I think now, though, it's changed that they see the you know the, the positivity of having the channel in there.
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And there's still some conflict.
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There's still some sales reps that you know kind of tend to go well, it's mine, um.
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And then, if you're making that shift, like if, like I did, I went from direct sales to channel Um, my first and foremost.
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Number one thing is do not be a car salesman, because the last thing you want to do is sell to a partner.
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There is no trust there.
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Think about it when you're going.
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When you're going to buy a car.
00:17:32.362 --> 00:17:34.567
What's the first thing that happens within five minutes?
00:17:34.567 --> 00:17:37.586
Oh, you're looking for a car and they start selling you.
00:17:38.611 --> 00:17:40.017
I don't trust that person because they're not.
00:17:40.017 --> 00:17:41.280
They don't even know who I am.
00:17:41.280 --> 00:17:42.925
They don't know what I'm looking for.
00:17:42.925 --> 00:17:45.432
They don't know what my dislikes and likes are.
00:17:45.432 --> 00:17:55.387
The same thing with a partner you have to understand not just them as a person, but you have to understand their business and before that, you've got to build that trust.
00:17:55.387 --> 00:17:57.405
It's not selling the product.
00:17:57.405 --> 00:18:02.324
My motto that I've got on my LinkedIn is a perfect example Sell the solution, not the product.
00:18:02.324 --> 00:18:05.631
You've got to provide that partner a solution.
00:18:05.631 --> 00:18:12.221
And it's the same thing like a regular direct sales rep goes to a customer.
00:18:12.221 --> 00:18:15.424
You've got to look at it as your partner is your customer.
00:18:15.424 --> 00:18:17.227
Don't look at it as competition.
00:18:17.227 --> 00:18:20.730
Don't look at it as a gatekeeper.
00:18:20.730 --> 00:18:29.351
In order for them to succeed, you need to earn their trust, understand their business and their competition and make it easy for them to do business with you.
00:18:30.661 --> 00:18:32.826
No, I think you're 100% correct.
00:18:32.826 --> 00:18:34.852
So I think we sort of have to meet the partner.
00:18:34.852 --> 00:18:42.402
Where the partner actually leads, the last thing they want to happen is they're being forced or driven in a certain direction.
00:18:42.402 --> 00:18:44.505
Instead, we sort of have to walk them through.
00:18:44.505 --> 00:18:46.648
Here's how we're helping co-sell motion.
00:18:46.648 --> 00:18:49.193
Bring me in, I'm going to help make your life easier.
00:18:49.193 --> 00:18:59.448
And suddenly it's like okay, we're approaching this from a team perspective and then we really are into that sort of co-sell motion Sounds good when it's working.
00:18:59.448 --> 00:19:02.208
I imagine sometimes it doesn't.
00:19:02.208 --> 00:19:08.626
I'd love to hear a little bit from you in terms of these sort of ups and downs of being a chief ecosystem officer.
00:19:08.807 --> 00:19:18.848
Yeah, I think lately, the biggest thing that I've seen is that companies still feel that it's a sales role.
00:19:18.848 --> 00:19:25.528
Don't get me wrong, it is, but I see it as an everything role, and I mean everything.
00:19:25.528 --> 00:19:38.683
Like we said, wearing multiple hats, um, needing to be able to like, articulate everything that's happening around you to the leadership, to the leadership company or, excuse me, to the leadership team, as if it's your own company.
00:19:38.683 --> 00:19:41.771
You literally got to put that hat on and go.
00:19:41.771 --> 00:19:50.134
Okay, how am I going to articulate to the CEO, to the board, to the investor, why you have to go this route or why you have to do this?
00:19:50.134 --> 00:19:56.553
The hardest part, I think being in this role, is conveying one word, and that word is patience.
00:19:56.553 --> 00:20:05.009
If a company says they want a channel sales org, my question back to them is always you know what's the timeframe and what's the budget?
00:20:05.009 --> 00:20:12.346
I can't tell you how many times you hear oh yeah, we've got the budget and we would like to see sales grow by X in the next 12 months.
00:20:12.346 --> 00:20:21.770
I walked away in some companies and said it's not going to happen, it's not realistic, but that's what I love about this job.
00:20:21.770 --> 00:20:22.653
It's the challenge.
00:20:22.653 --> 00:20:26.461
That's what I love about this job.
00:20:26.461 --> 00:20:26.883
It's the challenge.
00:20:26.903 --> 00:20:28.405
People who know me know that I love a challenge and showing that.
00:20:28.405 --> 00:20:39.342
You know, as long as I was hired to do the job and I do what I do best and I provide them a 90 day plan you know a six month plan, what's going to happen in the next one to five years.
00:20:39.342 --> 00:20:52.864
I've always done that and if you stick to it, then I know the challenge that I was tasked with, I've completed, and then I know in that timeframe what worked, what didn't work, and I just take that to the next step.
00:20:52.864 --> 00:21:07.425
But I think and this has happened quite a few times the moment you have to pivot is when and every time I'm sorry I'm going to say this, but every time I hear the word pivot reminds me of the friends episode with Ross.
00:21:07.486 --> 00:21:08.367
Anyway, just have to say that.
00:21:08.367 --> 00:21:25.171
But when you have to pivot, that's when, in my case, my mind starts becoming more creative, which again, I love because it allows me to learn from any of my mistakes or, as they say, failures.
00:21:25.171 --> 00:21:32.432
But I've always said but in order to succeed, you're going to have to fail, and there's nothing wrong with that.
00:21:32.432 --> 00:21:46.481
It just makes it that much, you know, makes me that much stronger and that much more willing to go beyond what I thought I was ever capable of doing, and to me it's more of a journey and I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.
00:21:46.903 --> 00:21:47.664
Awesome, Jasmina.
00:21:47.664 --> 00:21:59.948
I think that's been a wonderfully insightful in terms of the opportunities that come with building a channel, some of the complexities around that, how you have to drive introductions, sometimes referrals.
00:21:59.948 --> 00:22:01.451
We're a big fan of referrals.
00:22:01.451 --> 00:22:05.587
Here at the podcast we always like to get our current guest to introduce our next guest.
00:22:05.587 --> 00:22:06.410
Who did you have in mind?
00:22:07.271 --> 00:22:08.575
oh, hands down.
00:22:08.575 --> 00:22:11.039
Laura dashney, that woman.
00:22:11.039 --> 00:22:16.950
She's been a mentor, um, and a good and one of my great friends.
00:22:16.950 --> 00:22:21.968
But she has helped me through some of those times where I was talking about the challenges.
00:22:21.968 --> 00:22:31.250
She was a business owner for so many years and so she knew what to kind of provide assistance with during those times.
00:22:31.250 --> 00:22:40.163
But she's in a new, what I would call a new channel role, or I should say a new role that she put together as a job vision for the channel.
00:22:40.163 --> 00:22:51.250
So the one thing I can say about her in this role I think every channel chief needs to take a look at this and what she's done to kind of help the channel.
00:22:51.250 --> 00:22:53.826
So this is I personally, laura Dashney.
00:22:53.826 --> 00:22:55.150
I think you're going to have a great time with her.
00:22:56.059 --> 00:22:57.403
Awesome, laura, we're coming from you.
00:22:57.403 --> 00:22:59.109
Jasmina, thank you so much for coming on.
00:22:59.380 --> 00:22:59.842
Absolutely.
00:22:59.842 --> 00:23:00.705
Thank you for having me.