Jeff Cheal explains how Optimizely generated $400 million in revenue in a competitive and crowded SaaS market.
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0:00
For the last like 12 to 18 months, if you went on, and this is so silly, if you
0:03
just
0:04
Googled Optimizing, our ARR reported numbers were much lower, this is because
0:08
Optimizing merged with the company Epic Server back in 2020, and the problem
0:13
with brand awareness
0:14
is that when you come together to brands, you choose one of the names, people
0:17
only know you as one
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thing as opposed to, "Yeah, this should be a really diversified business."
0:22
[Music]
0:32
All right, we're back at last. Welcome to the Nearbound podcast, and it's
0:36
always so much fun
0:37
to spend some time and market with folks and then get them back into the
0:41
conversation.
0:42
So today we have in Jeff Chill from Optimizely that just posted about Optimize
0:49
ly crossing 400
0:50
million in revenue. And Jeff, you and I had the chance to meet in New York at a
0:54
sales assembly
0:55
dinner and kind of geek out on all things partnerships revealed near bound. And
0:59
I was like,
0:59
"Oh my gosh, we have to have you on the pod." So it's so great to see you here,
1:03
my man.
1:04
Yeah, thanks to the invite. I appreciate it. And yeah, it's a big day for Optim
1:09
izely. It's great
1:09
to get that out there in the world. And it's exciting. Good time to be part of
1:14
the ship.
1:14
100%.
1:16
No, that's insane. When I saw that post, I told Jared, I was like, "I did not
1:20
realize
1:20
that Optimizely was that big." And in a time where there's a lot of
1:24
doom and gloom around SaaS, I think just being reminded, there's a ton of value
1:31
being created.
1:31
There's a ton of success out there as well. So I was excited to see that. And
1:36
especially
1:37
because I was like, "Oh, you're coming on the podcast today. I got to learn
1:40
what are the secrets
1:41
from an organization that's crushing it at that level."
1:43
Well, we got to share a big reason for the announcement, right? It's a little
1:49
bit of just PR
1:49
about Optimizely because for the last 12 to 18 months, if you went on, and this
1:55
is so silly,
1:55
if you just Google Optimizely, our ARR reported numbers were that slower. This
1:59
is because Optimizely
2:01
merged with the company Epic Server back in 2020. And the problem with brand
2:05
awareness is that
2:06
when you come together to brands, you choose one of the names, people only know
2:10
you as one thing
2:11
as opposed to, "Yeah, we have a really diversified business." And getting away
2:15
from,
2:16
I think, a history of Optimize, which is A/B testing, started in 2012 by two
2:20
Google product
2:21
managers. And this really like romantic story and now merging it with this
2:25
platform story and
2:27
bringing these things to the forefront. That's what helps us get into market.
2:31
We were meeting this
2:32
week. CEO was meeting with some of our partners. And we got asked, "What are
2:36
our biggest problem
2:37
is right now?" Even having good AR numbers. It's just being aware for the right
2:42
products. It's
2:42
being known for something and not everything. And it's really hard to do,
2:46
especially in a crowded
2:47
SaaS space. Actually, I want to tie what you just said together, Isaac, with
2:51
what Jeff just said.
2:52
Because this just dropped in the past week was the Scott Brinkers MarTech
2:57
landscape.
2:57
Did you see that, Isaac? Oh, my gosh. I had to use a magnifying glass. It was
3:03
like a
3:04
ponter-lessed painting. It was just more absurd than ever.
3:09
So I have to comment on this because it's very relevant to this conversation
3:13
being that I think
3:13
optimizes is one of those pillar companies. How many of these have actually
3:17
crossed 100 million,
3:18
much less multiple hundreds of million in revenue, optimizes being one of the
3:22
paragons of that space,
3:24
is that it grew from 11,000 last year to 14,106. Nearly 30% growth in one year
3:30
for a mature landscape.
3:32
It's like, I actually did not anticipate that. I didn't think that it was going
3:37
to grow so much.
3:38
Now, obviously, a lot of those are AI-fueled MarTech applications. But given
3:45
what we saw last
3:45
year in a consolidation and a lot of companies hurting, I was surprised to see
3:49
so much growth.
3:50
And maybe, Jeff, you're probably closer to that MarTech interesting narrative.
3:55
I'd actually love
3:55
your opinion on what you've seen in the past couple of years is a lot of
3:59
companies rigor around
4:01
go to market and partnerships. How have you grown in a time where the number of
4:07
competitors is
4:08
increasing and the number of net new entrants into the space is increasing?
4:14
Yeah, we grew a few different ways. We went through five or six different
4:19
acquisitions in three or
4:20
four years. We were acquired by Insight Partners who invested in a business in
4:25
a tough time to try
4:27
to bring together some similar companies. We modeled out our acquisition
4:31
strategy around one concept.
4:33
And that was growing up into the right on the Gardener Force to report. A DXP
4:37
platform that had
4:38
a pretty clear definition of how to win. And we moved away from the competitors
4:43
to the standalone
4:44
solutions and we're aiming at the adoption point. And we want to have a
4:47
cohesive suite.
4:48
In doing so, you invest. What came out of that, though, was 10,000 customers
4:55
with over 70% of
4:56
them owning just one of our products. If we just stopped doing new acquisition
5:02
and did cross-sell,
5:03
we could be growing as well. And that would be a great way to grow at a pretty
5:07
reasonable pace.
5:08
And so we're finding vendor consolidation not only from the buyer perspective,
5:12
because customers do
5:13
want to buy from single vendor. We have opinions and options across all these
5:16
platforms. We bought
5:17
good solutions that are leaders in a bunch of quadrants and that's good. I
5:21
think the anti-
5:24
composable solution and a suite solution, we have good things in a lot of
5:28
places and that solidifies
5:30
the customers. I think as customers are getting more practical about their
5:33
spend, they do want to
5:35
invest in a platform, whether that is Adobe, whether that is Salesforce,
5:39
whether that is other
5:40
brands that have unified Martec, because it's just frankly too much work to go
5:45
to multiple vendors,
5:46
even with good point solutions. So you said something very important, unified
5:49
Martec. And I
5:50
always can call people's bluff just by going to their homepage. And I love that
5:54
I go to the
5:55
Optimizely homepage and it says we are a team player. And you're featuring
5:59
integrations and
6:00
the ecosystem story and those nearbound integrated networks that you have right
6:04
at your fingertips.
6:05
And I actually love the marketplace and everything that you all built there. In
6:09
addition, of course,
6:09
to the boutique agencies, to the more GSI players that you now have as a part
6:14
of your ecosystem,
6:16
that is part of the narrative of this maturing market is if you don't interoper
6:20
ate, if you're
6:21
not a team player, if I can't trust one major vendor to help me make 10
6:25
downstream decisions,
6:27
then I don't really want it to add in that new vendor.
6:29
Right. And I think, you know, on the integration side, like our challenge is
6:35
that it's not going
6:35
to be like our system robust, right? Like we're not the center of anybody's
6:39
Martec slide. Like I
6:40
always position like if you vision a Salesforce and their own Martec slide and
6:45
where you fit in that
6:47
like massive confusion and investment, like it is very rare to be in the middle
6:52
of it's not even
6:52
really important. Like you have to integrate with the other pieces and places.
6:55
So whether that's
6:57
our product team asking my partnership team to go out there and find key integ
7:01
rations for things
7:02
that we just don't do well, right? And acknowledgement that when we hit that RP
7:06
, you know, a good
7:07
person that our RP is going to be, do you integrate with X? Like do you
7:10
integrate with X? And it's
7:11
going to be that sales person's like dread and fear to say like, do we
7:16
integrate with X? And make
7:17
sure I can say yes, right? Whether that's the pieces that we know they're going
7:20
to own like a good
7:21
CRM or social platforms or whatever it's going to be. And so you can't be a
7:26
leader if you don't
7:27
play well with others. And I think we've done a great practice job of playing
7:29
well with others.
7:31
So I would love to ask you a little bit about given the size of your ecosystem
7:37
and you have
7:38
partners on the tech side as well as the solution side, you as the I think your
7:44
title is VP of
7:45
partnerships. Is that correct? Yeah. What are you doing? Like how are you
7:50
starting with the strategic level before we get down to the tactical level?
7:55
What are you thinking
7:56
about on kind of like an annual or quarterly cadence in both of those buckets?
8:00
What are you
8:01
trying to achieve? Is it like net new partners? Or is there a certain number of
8:05
activities you're
8:05
trying to drive with partners and how does that differ from app to solution?
8:09
Yep. On the solution
8:10
side, over 50% of our revenue comes from solution partners, right? And we've
8:14
been a partner driven
8:16
network for our long history on the on the CMSI because that's a very partner
8:21
driven approach.
8:23
When I started in 2015, we had no outbound SDRs. We were all inbound just
8:29
taking and leads because
8:30
majority of our leads were coming from our partner network, but then it was
8:33
good or bad.
8:34
Now we're at this place where we can be proactive. And so the solution side is
8:38
working with partners
8:39
on referrals and trying to bring in business by creating books of business that
8:45
are partners.
8:46
When they invest in our tech, we certify them. They want to refer to us. They
8:49
want to build
8:50
because they get huge service dollars of our platforms. On tech, it's totally
8:54
different.
8:55
Because what we're trying to do is establish entropy with our technology
8:58
partners, right? We're
9:00
trying to go to the leaders in certain tech platforms and attach ourselves to
9:07
those deals.
9:07
And we compensate our team on referred deals by partners and then influenced.
9:14
The challenge is
9:15
forming a partnership with a tech partner and having them refer business to you
9:19
, that's like
9:20
earned equity. And that doesn't happen overnight. You need to really nurture
9:23
that. That's a lot of
9:24
the new down philosophy. It's coming together and being able to align sales
9:28
teams to each other
9:29
and gain that equity to where you want to refer to each other. The fact that we
9:33
chose to then
9:33
compensate our team on influenced deals where we're sharing intel, we're
9:38
getting into a run
9:39
together, we're figuring out how we went together. And so from a team
9:42
perspective, my KPIs are
9:44
attached to deals. How many deals can we attach a tech partner to? Increase win
9:49
rate in order to
9:50
establish when a partner was involved, when they worked, right? And then
9:54
renewal rate as well.
9:56
We definitely look long term at how many customers are renewing. The close book
10:01
revenue,
10:01
that should be there. It's icing on the cake. And how many deals refer? It's
10:06
those incremental
10:07
attributes that allow us to amplify the value of tech partners in a way that we
10:11
do.
10:11
How much are you fighting over the influence component?
10:16
It's tough, right? And that's a hard one to attach to think the business is
10:24
open to that
10:25
attribution knowing that, hey, we're establishing value in intel. I think the
10:31
important thing,
10:32
Isaac, is that we have representation on our partner team on the C level. We
10:37
have a chief
10:38
partnership officer and that chief partners, if officer grew her book in her
10:42
experience,
10:43
in bringing in partners, establishing their place in our business. And so when
10:47
you bring an
10:48
influenced attribution to our CFO or to our CSO or whatever, that fight has
10:53
already been fought,
10:55
right? And now it's just numbers and it's attached. And I think what they want
10:59
is accountability
11:00
for aggressiveness, right? We want to bring our tech partners to deals. We don
11:05
't want to make it
11:05
the job of sales reps to ask for it. And so by bringing these people along and
11:11
adding intel to
11:12
our win plan on somebody who's already trying to form a win plan, that's where
11:15
they see the best value.
11:17
What I love is how you're talking about the improvements to the business model,
11:22
right? So like,
11:22
attach isn't necessarily a panacea partner attach rate, right? Par, Aaron McG
11:28
arry is like
11:29
one of my buddies that talks about this. It was formerly Qualtrics and Sales
11:32
force. And I love
11:33
the talk track around this because what we're trying not to have is that debate
11:36
about influence
11:37
where like, look, when partner attach rate exists, what happens to the unit
11:41
economics of the business?
11:43
Look at the win rate of the partner attach cohort. Is it fundamentally better
11:46
or is it not?
11:47
And what we're not talking about and arguing about is the effectiveness of the
11:50
partner program.
11:51
What we're talking about is the growth of the business, right? Like, you need
11:55
to be able to
11:55
demonstrate the impact of partnerships on the overall growth of the business.
12:00
And that's how you
12:02
do it. You speak in terms of business numbers, not just partner metrics, Qualtr
12:05
tr metrics.
12:06
So I love the way that you frame that. It's how we should be having these
12:10
conversations in order to
12:12
have a partner led or ecosystem led business that is running nearbound plays.
12:16
You can
12:16
say the Intel play, right? Which I love. It's like, hey, AEs know how to
12:20
interoperate here. And
12:22
that Jeff's tech partners aren't just going to hand me deals that are ready to
12:27
sign on the dotted
12:28
line for six figures. Like, I need to build a multi-threaded business case. And
12:32
not having
12:32
partners involved would be really silly. And the good reps are on text
12:37
exchanges with their
12:39
counterparts at the partners that they know from a tech perspective. That's
12:43
exactly what I'm going
12:43
to ask you about. How do those reps work? That's really good. They know. And we
12:48
tie it up for them.
12:49
You know, scale is not need. You know, linking reps with each other. It's
12:53
getting the reps in
12:54
the same room and letting them establish their business. And they know whether
12:57
it's by vertical,
12:58
by size, you know, we're mid-market enterprise. It's the same enterprise rep at
13:02
the partner that,
13:02
you know, like keeps the fountain running. They do that work. And we don't need
13:07
to do that work.
13:07
So I can go establish the next strategic partner, right? And bring that in.
13:11
Here, we went through
13:12
an interesting change. So, you know, when I really got involved in partnerships
13:17
about over a year ago,
13:18
we really did not have this attribution for the tech program team. And even
13:22
having somebody in
13:22
the sea level, like the philosophy was there, but it took me nine to 12 months
13:26
to get over the
13:27
economics of it. And whether it was where are the points going to come from?
13:31
You know, what's the
13:32
attribution of the point? Everything is a point of the deal, right? If it's a
13:35
percentage, what's that
13:36
going to do? Is that coming out of the marketing budget to acquire the customer
13:40
? Is that coming out
13:41
of our, you know, retention budget to keep the customer, whatever? Because it
13:45
does all point
13:46
to money, right? Somebody's not getting margin from that. We're paying out
13:49
somebody else to do it.
13:50
I think when it changed was the proof point of the increase win rate, right? To
13:57
where, you know,
13:58
we knew that. And then, you know, our CFO, CSR willing to now add more people
14:03
to the attribution
14:04
that would get paid on it by, you know, we're creating better behavior by
14:09
paying the right
14:09
people. And it was not easy. It was really not easy. And it was a lot of
14:14
headaches. And it was a lot
14:15
of waving the flag to people that otherwise had a lot of other things to care
14:19
about. And finally,
14:19
giving their attention where they've been like, listen, we'll give you the
14:21
tools, we'll let you do
14:22
this. We're going to model this out. We're not going to let it go forever
14:25
without analyzing it.
14:26
But we trust that the model that you're presenting will work.
14:30
Right. So you had to have those tactical, you know, wins in those stories and
14:34
the reps like,
14:35
you have to fight the good fight, right? Like there is no, there is no solution
14:40
or magic wand
14:41
where all of a sudden your executive team goes, you know what, you're just
14:46
right about everything.
14:47
Like it's an ongoing battle and you have to be willing to take that flag. And
14:51
one of the things
14:52
I talked about in the book, the Dearbound Minds have this journey from
14:54
curiosity, right, to courage,
14:56
to conviction, like, you got to be willing to risk and to fight the fight. And
15:00
that's the job to
15:01
be done is you got to unite the departments and, you know, get them to be
15:04
comfortable with the
15:06
risk associated with it and build that trust. I think it's a fantastic call out
15:09
. I had one
15:10
quick question coming back to because I'm playing in MarTech for the past
15:14
couple of, you know,
15:15
cycles of my career. And this is getting a little bit more tactical. One of the
15:22
partners that I
15:22
worked with when I was at Drift was a little company called CRO metrics or
15:25
Chrome metrics,
15:26
right. And they're a top agency, they were a top agency partner. I think they
15:30
might have been
15:31
number one when I was doing some stuff with Optimizely at Drift. And then if I
15:35
code your
15:35
solutions page now, I'm seeing some bigger names like proficient, right, and
15:39
proficient has a big
15:40
book of Adobe business. And they're like premier platinum, which is CRO metrics
15:44
now is like gold.
15:45
There's a different tier in place. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about
15:49
like,
15:49
hey, we had these boutique agencies, but then I see proficient. Okay, there's
15:53
some SI growth there
15:54
and it's in the Adobe ecosystem. I'm assuming that proficient and that's going
15:59
well. Talk to me a
15:59
little bit about how you go from like these boutique agencies to start winning
16:03
and having
16:04
preferred platinum spot, you know, partnerships with, you know, an SI like a
16:07
proficient.
16:08
This is the crazy part is that you bring together Optimizely has a complete
16:12
partner philosophy
16:13
that was almost like, you know, in a in a glass bowl compared to the partner
16:17
philosophy that was
16:17
at every server. And your tiering is all thrown off and your attribution is all
16:22
thrown off and
16:23
your values all thrown off. Note that, you know, Optimizely learned a lot in
16:27
its partner ecosystem
16:29
the years before acquisition and had to go through some growth. And so with the
16:32
partners that it
16:33
was choosing the value that it was gaining, there's a lot of partners out there
16:36
in the ecosystem,
16:37
making a business off of Google Optimize that just frankly weren't interested
16:41
in partnering
16:42
to the platform like Optimizely. And so you met two different companies at the
16:46
same point.
16:47
When you bring them together, now we're able to go to a proficient, for example
16:50
. And their
16:51
interest in us is that we can talk to multiple teams in that business and bring
16:56
those teams
16:57
together on a single account. And so the proficiency and the bigger GSIs of the
17:01
world,
17:02
they're interested in our multi dimensional like Aspen Reap launched a
17:05
partnership with WPP. And
17:07
it's because of their, you know, different agencies focused on different things
17:11
. Now a CMS project
17:13
and a developer project can be paired with a crow project to do it that way.
17:16
That doesn't
17:16
change our interest in chrometrics. We still have that focus with chrometrics
17:22
where they are a
17:23
platinum player in their space to do incredible work in a specific line. They
17:27
've never really
17:29
bricked out into CMS development and that approach. And so while Optimizely can
17:33
take a sweet approach
17:34
and we can focus on certain partners that want to touch like multiple parts of
17:37
the ecosystem,
17:38
we can still tier our partners. Now I'll say like the tiering of partners is an
17:45
incredibly hard
17:46
discipline to keep it right. Because you can't take away a tier unless you want
17:51
to be yelled at in
17:52
private and public forums about it. It is impossible to measure different
17:55
partners in different
17:56
places in the same way. Our partner team works incredulously to try to get like
18:00
everybody on the
18:01
same page. But yeah, it's incredibly hard. And so in that note, like our public
18:07
tiers might be
18:07
mismatched. We look at those partners strategically in a different way on what
18:12
we're promoting to
18:13
them and how we're valuing them. And so we'll continue to keep those two things
18:17
parallel where
18:18
there's experimentation only partners that would be valuable and then the
18:21
proficiency too.
18:21
What's interesting about that to me that just stands out is
18:27
the difference in the end customer. So like this is where Isaac, your title is
18:36
Chief Market Officer,
18:37
not Chief Marketing Officer. And I've always had this strong pull towards
18:42
market dynamics
18:44
and less so company dynamics. And what you just spoke to was like, hey, the
18:48
market that we're
18:48
growing into requires a different type of partner, right? The customer outcomes
18:52
, etc. And the partner
18:53
value proposition is different. And what Jeff just said, I think it was a
18:57
really, really good sound
18:59
bite on understanding your partner value proposition has to change based on the
19:03
market that you're
19:04
going after, the customer demands, and specifically what the partner wants. You
19:08
have to help that
19:09
partner solve a problem, right? So this cross departmental and being able to
19:13
multi thread
19:13
and have a more strategic engagement is absolutely critical compared to, let's
19:19
say the, you know,
19:20
conversion rate conversation with Chrome metrics. That doesn't mean that's not
19:23
important for a
19:24
subset of your market that you need to grow. But then you start to think about,
19:27
you know,
19:28
divisions or market opportunities and territories, not just based on company
19:32
size,
19:33
which certainly there is some of that, but based on customer need and demand.
19:37
And that you're
19:38
going to have some partners that are really great for some customers and
19:41
segments. You have some
19:42
partners that are very different. And in that maturation, you start to
19:46
understand, ah, I understand
19:48
the market. I understand what the customer wants and the what the customer
19:52
needs. And
19:53
that's the reason why partnerships exist. You know, I think, you know,
19:57
proficient makes its
19:59
book on, you know, Adobe business and that's fair, you know, and I think they
20:02
do that because
20:03
Adobe provides a suite of tools and good integrations across like multiple
20:07
touch points that allow
20:08
a proficient project at an enterprise level to grow a huge scope of work
20:13
spanning both like
20:15
CMS development, working operations, strategy design, like all the pieces that
20:19
it comes. If
20:20
we can carve out that in any way by bringing in integrated tools that allow us
20:24
to tell that
20:25
same story for a different price point with a different trajectory and company,
20:29
you know,
20:30
we're comparing in size all the time. We're really trying to meet those guys at
20:34
the front,
20:34
not only in the quad room, but also like at the customer. And that's a good
20:38
thing. You know,
20:39
it's an honor to be able to compete against those guys and have the same story
20:44
told and be
20:45
interesting at the same time. They will always be, you know, dedicated players
20:49
in our space. They
20:50
just want to do CMS development in that size. But it really is where we want to
20:53
be. So everybody
20:54
trigex upwards. It's knowing from a solution partner side that we can meet them
20:59
at multiple
20:59
points of their story because it's ultimately the partner story. It's the story
21:03
that they're
21:04
telling. It's the transformation story that we're telling. We're a suite of
21:07
tools, you know,
21:08
that fits really well into that story. So you have to build a suite that comple
21:11
ments them rather
21:12
than trying to get them to play your game. Jeff, I want to bounce back for just
21:16
a second on
21:18
the kind of executive buy in executive alignment topic. Because I want to see
21:23
if I can tease
21:24
something out here that I think might be really important for our listeners. So
21:28
you have what I
21:30
think a lot of people in partnerships imagine is the perfect scenario. Oh, you
21:35
've got a CPO,
21:36
you've got executive buy in. Sure, it's easy for Jeff because everybody there
21:42
believes in him and
21:42
gives him the resources. I want to ask you a question. Even though you have a C
21:46
PO, even though
21:47
you have executive buy in, do you still have to frequently and repeatedly go
21:53
through the process
21:54
of proving to your internal teams, to your executives the value of the
21:59
approaches you're trying to take
22:01
having and rehabbing those conversations about whether or attach and influence
22:05
makes sense.
22:05
How should we do compensation? Is that something that's just settled and now
22:09
you can do whatever
22:09
you want or you're continually having those conversations? No, and we're not
22:13
trying to win
22:13
directly. I think the way that we win is we get sales to be our champion. We
22:19
prove it to sales
22:19
people so that they're screaming on it. Because if we're doing it in our own
22:24
bubble, they're going
22:25
to stop believing us after a while. It has to be that we showed marketing, that
22:29
we were a pipeline
22:30
generation by doing partner marketing and attribution to partner-in-a-red
22:34
events where
22:35
power three, power four events drove better pipeline generation than standard
22:40
field marketing,
22:41
right, where we could grab other people's customers and bring them in. On the
22:45
sales side, we have to
22:46
have sales reps, not only in our public channels, like saying, "Hey, we won
22:50
this deal because of
22:51
this partner." That's a big deal too, Isaac, is that we have a few places in
22:55
the business that we
22:56
scream from the rooftops. We have to fight to constantly be in that wingwire to
23:02
say this partner
23:02
was involved and this deal was made because of this partner. If you do that,
23:08
the CFO conversation
23:10
becomes really easy because then they see the amplification. I love and hate it
23:15
. Our partner
23:17
community and the partner philosophy that's being built, when it echoes in the
23:21
boardroom,
23:21
when our CEO walks in and has a conversation and is told that we want a deal
23:25
because of an
23:26
integration, that's going to happen. That wasn't really our work. That's going
23:29
to happen naturally
23:30
anyway. He doesn't need to stay like, "Oh my gosh, we don't have a--" or "We
23:34
lost a deal because of a
23:35
certain partnership." That stuff is getting echoed the right places. We win,
23:39
but it's
23:40
it's diligence. It's staying a first-class citizen. It's making sure that the
23:45
business and the sales
23:46
philosophy doesn't come first before the partner philosophy and it's proving to
23:50
them through
23:50
results and picking the right partners and going to market the right way and
23:56
helping them win.
23:57
I always say it's worse when the business is here and then the partnership is
24:01
here. The more that
24:02
you overlay those two things, the better you are. My victory is going to be
24:06
when partnership revenue
24:09
is a top-line plan on our 2025 revenue. Right now, it's add-on. Right now, it's
24:14
evergreen.
24:15
It's benefited on the top. When we are beholden to a certain part of the
24:20
revenue stream and now we
24:21
can budget ourselves that way, that's when we really won. That was such an epic
24:26
little monologue
24:27
there. I response to that question. Jared, I was thinking about your rhythm of
24:31
the business
24:31
section and nearbound about the business goals and the partnership goals. The
24:35
more those are
24:36
tightly aligned. I just think it's such a good reminder for listeners, like if
24:39
you ever find
24:40
yourself and I know many of you do because I talk with you all the time,
24:43
feeling a little bit
24:45
thick to me like, "Well, my company, I don't have executive buy-in. We don't
24:49
have a seat at the
24:50
table. It's only whatever you think is going to solve it and finally you'll
24:55
just be free to go do
24:56
all the things you want to do and no one will bug you about whether they're
24:59
working." That's
25:00
never the case. It's not the case for marketers. It's not the case for any
25:03
department
25:04
at let alone partnership. Understanding that there's a lot of tools in your
25:08
toolkit. One is getting
25:09
those quick, easy wins with the other department so they can start to believe
25:12
in you and be willing
25:13
to give you more time and chance. Another is having a, I like to call it a
25:18
causal chain,
25:19
a logical story for the ways in which partners, that's different from
25:23
attribution because
25:24
attribution is not as easy a lot of times. But at least you can tell a story
25:27
that's logical and you
25:28
can show here are the steps along the journey and why partners are going to
25:32
make that better.
25:33
Then have attribution to the extent that you can while recognizing it's
25:37
imperfect. But if you
25:38
kind of layer those together and then you have stories and anecdotes that you
25:42
highlight,
25:42
highlight those wins repeatedly and don't just assume that people, okay,
25:46
everybody knows now they
25:47
get it. I don't need to keep highlighting it. Yes, you do. You need to keep
25:50
reminding. We
25:51
want this because of partners. We want this because of partners. That validates
25:54
our causal theory.
25:55
That also is fortified by the attribution to the extent that we have it and you
25:59
're kind of like
26:00
cycling through those all the time even when you have executive buy-in. That
26:04
conversation never
26:05
ends. I think that's just a good reminder for everybody. Yeah, we do. I never
26:11
just would call
26:12
me shy. I try to scream every chance that I get and even we'll announce anytime
26:17
we have a new
26:18
connected partner on reveal. We'll go and put a value proposition to the team
26:24
and say,
26:25
this data is now available to sales and we'll get them interested. In doing so
26:29
in that quick snippet
26:30
of information, the good sales are if I can see the adoption and the login of
26:34
the tools, I can
26:35
see the interactions on Salesforce, be sure of the data. I can see the number
26:38
of interactions I have
26:39
with the tech team because they see a new dimension and it invigorates them to
26:43
want to win more.
26:45
It's not peppering and it's proof too because it gets them thinking, what's the
26:49
next partner that
26:50
I need? When they're asking for it, when they're initiating it, when they're
26:53
part of the conversation,
26:55
and it's not just throwing stuff on a wall and seeing what sticks, then we're
26:59
all bought it. We have
27:00
invited partners to big events throughout the year. Our sales kick off. We
27:05
invite partners
27:06
to their dedicated partner days like a lot of other stuff. So partners are part
27:10
of that ecosystem
27:11
connected directly to sales and now it's not just in another room. It's all
27:16
aligned and I think that
27:17
repetition and forced behavior makes the financial conversation that eventually
27:23
come much easier.
27:24
You have to have the reps and sets and that's why I love speaking in terms of
27:27
cadences of rituals
27:28
and the rhythm of the business from annual down to the daily data place. So
27:35
picking that apart a
27:36
little bit more, I think a lot of folks haven't really seen the promised land
27:41
when it comes to
27:42
effectively utilizing partner data. I've written a length about this. One of
27:47
the first pieces of
27:48
content is I wrote with Kevin Linahan on the reveal team, we wrote a 55 page
27:52
guide about the ultimate
27:54
guide to driving. That was the hardest editing job I've ever had in my life
27:58
trying to whittle
27:58
that thing down. So it was literally just about how to utilize partner data and
28:04
track partner
28:05
activities between sellers and reps because that actually actioning the data is
28:10
the hardest part.
28:11
I'd love for you to unpack a little bit more down that story, Jeff, of like,
28:15
hey, so we announce
28:16
that we have a new connected partner and this data is available. What else is
28:19
happening? Talk
28:20
to us a little bit more about how you're actioning this in a way that you feel
28:23
like, hey, this is a
28:24
big part of versus waiting for partners to come to you. You are activating it.
28:29
Yeah, we're lucky enough to have managers who sort that data. And I think like
28:33
sales reps
28:34
weren't discovered on their own, but man, they will absolutely take it once you
28:37
show them and
28:38
bring more deals to the table. And so a few dimensions that we do are like many
28:43
, when we launch a
28:43
partnership, we'll find five or six active deals in the short term. And I tell
28:47
my managers like,
28:48
you have to not just ask for their leads. You have to give them leads back. If
28:53
we're going to be going
28:54
in and evaluating their customer base and trying to find our opportunities, we
28:58
also need to use the
28:59
data, find our customers versus their prospects and give them a few return
29:04
needs to be sort of
29:05
just and then on those deals, we come to the table when my manager is inviting
29:12
rep A versus rep B.
29:13
I'm also sorting the partner's data to find out other customers of that rep in
29:19
advance. So I'm
29:20
trying to bring multiple opportunities to that rep so that they so I brought
29:23
something that they
29:24
wouldn't have, make their life easy. Don't try to discover it and make them
29:27
like social, right?
29:28
Then once you're in and you start to establish, then it's my manager's job to
29:33
keep the cadence
29:34
going to tell the story, to invite the right data so that the right data points
29:40
are coming and we're
29:40
almost building that playbook of what the conversation is going to look like
29:43
because we've all had,
29:44
you know, the rep to rep conversation where everybody shows up at a bad mood,
29:47
nobody wants to help
29:47
each other and then suddenly partnerships are getting the way rather than value
29:51
props, right?
29:52
But it's, hey, we bring these points home where we implement this deal,
29:55
especially since we can
29:57
attribute to that and then, you know, that's value to the job and then it's
30:02
finding, you know,
30:02
the way out. What are we going to do next? How are we going to help each other
30:05
win, you know,
30:06
finding that extra so it is a lot of work. It's almost three times the amount
30:11
of work on the tech
30:12
partner manager to make that thing go. Once you get that flywheel moving, like
30:16
our strategic
30:16
partnerships are really good ones. Like we just don't have to do that anymore.
30:20
Like they do it for
30:21
themselves because they know the value that they're getting out of the
30:24
relationship. Our biggest
30:25
problem right now is that we truly believe we have too many valuable
30:29
partnerships to action on
30:30
an a given point. We just have a huge ecosystem of tech partners that can be
30:35
incredibly valuable
30:36
to us and, you know, it's very hard to turn, you know, an average partnership
30:43
into a good partnership.
30:45
You know, we make the joke that like average partnerships are just really good
30:49
pen pals, right?
30:50
They're just amazing pen pals that we say nice things to every once a month. We
30:53
're supposed to have
30:54
a one-on-one, but we want to turn those into strategic mutual partnerships
30:59
through, you know,
31:00
commercials, through relationships, through everything. And the work to take it
31:04
is going to be three times
31:05
the effort that you think. But once you get it moving, these will be very
31:08
valuable for both sides.
31:09
So one of the questions I have for you, because I've definitely seen this stall
31:14
out in that early
31:15
phase before you get that flywheel going, you get a new partner, you start
31:19
sharing data with each
31:20
other. And it's like, cool, this data means there's opportunity everywhere. For
31:24
every department,
31:25
this can help our CS reps, you know, retain customers, this can help our sales
31:29
reps, our
31:30
co-marketing. But when you started with something very concrete, you said we
31:34
look for like four
31:35
or five active deals that we can, you know, utilize that partner to help us
31:40
with. And we try to give
31:41
them some open deals that they have who are customers of ours, try to give them
31:45
maybe some
31:46
Intel intros influence. That step right there, I'm really curious who is taking
31:52
that. Because what
31:52
I notice happens sometimes is you your sales team wants the leads from them.
31:58
But you got to give
32:00
some info or some leads to them. And that's probably going to come from your CS
32:04
team. But what incentive
32:06
do they have? Or is that coming from your sales team as well?
32:08
Type partner manager has to do it. Because nobody else is being attributed on
32:12
it. And like,
32:13
the CS team will do it in certain relationships. But like, the data is so clear
32:18
. It's searchable.
32:20
It's findable. Like, we don't need these teams to do that. We can put these
32:24
carrots out. And
32:25
many times I ask my tech team, like, you need to represent yourself as a sales
32:28
person. You need
32:29
to put yourself out there as we have enough sales force data to know the health
32:33
of the account.
32:34
You don't need that rep involved because they've got other things to do. And
32:39
they're being asked
32:40
to join partner calls all the time. Like, you have to be their constituent.
32:44
Because when you do,
32:44
they will pick up the slack and drive it. But like, if I don't need to ask the
32:48
rep, like,
32:48
I can look at the cross of the data. I can see the managers. I'm assuming data
32:52
quality is good.
32:53
But I'm going to throw some things up there and help and drive. And so by the
32:57
time, like,
32:58
the involvement is there, it's really already set.
33:01
You know?
33:02
Man, you just cracked that. It's so interesting because I think it's easy to
33:05
feel like,
33:06
okay, as a partner, as a partner pro, I'm just this orchestrator. I'm
33:09
coordinating everything.
33:10
I got so many things on my plate. So we'll get a new partner and then I'll say,
33:13
hey, sales reps, could you help them out and like give or success reps? Give
33:17
them some intel.
33:18
And then you're like, hand it off. They're like, well, they didn't do anything.
33:21
And they're not
33:22
going to do anything. Like, you're just saying, just go do it yourself. The
33:25
information is there.
33:25
The data is there. If you have a quick question to ask the rep on the account,
33:30
they can answer
33:30
you directly. But you can go and deliver that information. You can go deliver
33:34
the value to the
33:34
partner and grease the skids and make it easier than for you to get that value
33:38
back for your reps.
33:39
I wish this worked. I mean, they sound good on paper, but like, it does the
33:44
common CS,
33:45
like rep who has the attainment goals and has, you know, 40, 50 customers to
33:49
manage,
33:50
really care about like $1,000, fifth for the right information, maybe that they
33:53
're not going to
33:53
see for two or three months. Like, it's what we threw out there. But in reality
33:56
, like, if I can
33:57
do their work on their behalf, like, what I want is for them to know when they
34:01
get the question of
34:02
like, which tech partner should I, you know, pursue? Now, doing all that effort
34:06
does not mean that I
34:06
could have like, you know, 30 good partners that I can like run at that level.
34:11
So at some point,
34:12
you have to consolidate and pick the right ones. And that's not fun. You know,
34:16
I don't like letting
34:17
a partner down who has good momentum and like not pick it up the speed. But the
34:21
reality is to
34:22
give them that executive like presence, you know, you have to deliver at that
34:26
kind of level
34:27
and not type of data. And so you end up finding the ones. One last thing too,
34:31
guys, you guys,
34:32
when we pick our partners, like a lot of what we think about is, yes, we have a
34:36
lot of partners
34:37
that are bought together by our customers, right? The partners that really
34:41
succeed in
34:42
care of selling with us are the tech that meet us at the compelling event. When
34:47
we sell
34:48
experimentation, for example, there are tools that you cannot buy without other
34:52
things, like a
34:53
sixth sense or a demand base or our content square or quantum metric. Those are
34:57
bought by the same
34:58
buyer. They're in the same budget. They're considered at the same time. Those
35:02
partnerships
35:03
are great. I take a lot of partnerships that are enacting on active customers
35:07
of ours selling down
35:08
the road. Those are good. But let's focus on the compelling event partners
35:12
first, because that
35:13
will get sales out of bed, right? They're going to tax themselves the same RP
35:17
and that makes a
35:18
difference. So you got to lean in on the ones like that. And say and say no or
35:22
not yet to
35:23
partners who you like is a very hard thing to do. But yeah, it's necessary.
35:27
It's funny from a company in 400 million in revenue to it's just a founder in a
35:33
slide deck
35:34
and maybe an MVP product in the VC realm. I mean, Isaac, you've certainly seen
35:38
this like why now?
35:39
Why now? It's not just enough to have a value proposition. The compelling event
35:45
for me has
35:46
always been my best way that I've closed deals or big partnerships or something
35:50
like that is like,
35:50
why now? It's like, well, there's an existing initiative. And when I talk about
35:56
nearbound sales
35:57
or nearbound marketing and aligning on accounts, it's like, what are you trying
36:01
to align with with
36:02
your partners? Well, there's a business challenge and there's a business
36:05
initiative. And guess what
36:06
companies don't talk about? Companies don't talk about on LinkedIn, on their
36:11
website,
36:12
their business challenges and their business initiatives to solve that. No one
36:16
talks about
36:16
that publicly. The only way that you get that information is by working with
36:20
folks that are
36:21
going through that process. So you or one of your partners is a part of those
36:26
business initiatives.
36:27
And you have some insights into those business challenges. And when you come
36:31
together for that
36:32
compelling event, that's where you are inevitably going to see win rates
36:36
increase because you're
36:37
selling into an existing business problem with a known solution where you are
36:41
an expert. So I
36:42
love that compelling event component that makes you operate more like a
36:47
business operator by
36:49
understanding the customer, not just, hey, here's the partners that work well.
36:52
Well, why did they
36:53
work well? It's because of what you just said. Yeah, there's a fear. You look
36:56
at that RFP sometimes
36:58
and you see, you know, optimize Z and it has to integrate with XYZ. There's
37:03
certain things on
37:03
there that our sales reps know will be a cascading budget decision, right? We
37:07
're going to buy the
37:08
CMS before we buy this. We're going to do this before we're going to do this.
37:11
And nothing scares
37:12
off sales more than knowing that that other thing might get in the way of your
37:16
like,
37:16
availability, right? That there's a line of demarcation and they will go away
37:21
from that partner
37:21
because they just don't want to get involved. I want to get my money. I don't
37:24
want that partner
37:25
involved because I know that might actually come first in the process and come
37:28
first in the sale.
37:29
There's not much I can do about that. I can then instead bring along other
37:34
partners at the
37:35
compelling event and make tech partnerships a value, even though a particular
37:40
partner might be a
37:41
contention, right? I need to bring other things to the table and I need to help
37:45
show them that it
37:46
was a group effort so that even though it'd be a big ticket item that we sell
37:50
with because we
37:50
have a lot of big ticket items that we sell with won't get in the way, then the
37:54
practice itself was
37:55
still successful even if that one partner maybe wasn't valuable in that
37:59
situation.
37:59
I have to make a lighter comment on a phrase that you said earlier. I wrote it
38:03
down because I
38:03
loved it so much. Average partnerships are just really good pen pals. Your
38:07
account
38:08
executives don't care about Popo, partners on paper only. They couldn't care
38:12
less and I think
38:13
what is that compelling event tying those things together? Don't bring your
38:16
account executives or
38:18
your CSM's pen pals. They don't want more of your work. What they want is they
38:22
want your help
38:23
and that's not where a pen pal comes into play. That's where an activated
38:26
partner in a customer
38:28
story with the compelling event comes in and that's the difference between a
38:31
partner operator
38:33
that's just doing a job and a partner operator that's achieving results. I love
38:37
how you
38:37
frame that out, Jeff. The biggest fear that a sales rep has is losing a deal
38:41
because we don't
38:41
integrate with something and we've had that before and that goes straight up to
38:44
the executives.
38:45
Why don't we have an integration with these guys? It's so silly. What are we
38:48
paying you for?
38:49
You should be out there learning ahead of time because our competitor had a
38:52
better integration
38:53
in this case. That's just lost effort. That's not feature. That's a thing we
38:57
can fix. They're
38:59
constantly paranoid about the thing that we don't have in order to fix it. They
39:04
will take a meeting
39:05
with a partner to make sure they know about it, to make sure they have their
39:07
relationships,
39:08
but they're really counting on partnerships as a function to always be able to
39:12
say, "Yes, I think
39:13
having involved in these pen pal partner and paper relationships and these A's
39:18
come together,
39:19
they've always got themselves in mind. They're never thinking about the other
39:23
partner on the
39:23
other side of the phone, the way that a partner manager is." That's why I think
39:27
we have to evoke
39:27
that into place. Bring along until they have to help them win the deal. Bring
39:31
along. The best
39:32
partner example is, "I bring along a tech partner. We're talking about a deal.
39:38
We realize that the
39:39
tech partners in another part of the business that I'm in, I bring them into my
39:44
side of the business.
39:45
They bring me into their side of the business. Now we're not just helping each
39:48
other. We're expanding.
39:49
It's giving my sales rep some of the goods inherently. We're all a little
39:52
selfish as we should be.
39:53
You're trying to model out how to make them get something so that I can get
39:57
what I need to."
39:58
Quick question on the data side. When you're talking about these compelling
40:03
events or these
40:04
pieces of information about a sequence, a cascading effect of budget, the order
40:10
in which
40:10
customers are going to buy or expand something, are you tapping into your
40:15
partner data to set up any
40:16
kind of automations or alerts that say, "Hey, this customer is probably ripe
40:22
because they just
40:22
became a customer of this partner of ours," which historically means that they
40:27
're going to be in
40:27
the market for our offering. Next, do you have those kind of processes set up
40:31
where you're
40:31
kind of automatically prioritizing or pushing alerts to people or is it more of
40:36
a manual digging
40:37
into the data account by account as you go? Now we have more amplification when
40:43
somebody just
40:44
becomes a customer of our partners, that new data set. That's a huge dimension
40:48
of the shared
40:48
data that we get through a platform like reveal, right to know when it gets got
40:52
launched because
40:53
we know that investment will typically relate to the other investments that we
40:57
're seeing if we
40:58
didn't know about it before. We have way more data than we know what to do with
41:02
. That's why a full-time
41:04
partner manager could look at that dimension. It's very hard to have that
41:08
automation. A problem
41:10
that we have too is that some of our partners sell multiple products and maybe
41:13
we only integrate
41:14
with certain parts of their tech stack and certain products that they sell
41:17
rather than everything.
41:18
It's certain parts of their business is related to ours. I don't know a perfect
41:24
way to do it. I
41:24
wish I did because then we'd be pushing more information to them rather than
41:28
doing it. It's just got to be
41:30
diligence to ask the right questions, to find where the decision making was and
41:34
be able to look at
41:35
that data and see the trends, to be able to get a better out of it. I know that
41:38
we are doing our best
41:41
when we register new deals as a team. Look at those new deals immediately. Look
41:46
at the partner data,
41:47
immediately bringing the partners so that we're not coming at the last minute.
41:50
Now we're trying to
41:51
bring in tech partners at the discovery and accepted stage rather than a
41:55
contract stage to just ask
41:56
for a reference letter. There's this rev-ops utopia that I can see looming on
42:01
the horizon. People are
42:03
getting bits and pieces of it. Some things are manual. There's some alerts here
42:07
and there, but you
42:07
can imagine a world, not like you have all this data. If you have the data from
42:11
your partner ecosystem
42:13
and you've got it all flowing in your CRM, over time, the sophistication. We're
42:18
just learning how
42:19
to use this stuff and to use it well. The ability to proactively push that
42:25
information wherever it
42:26
needs to be, to set up triggers, to reprioritize account lists, to set up
42:31
recommendations for
42:32
marketing campaigns. There's just so much there. You start to bring AI into the
42:37
mix. I start to get
42:39
really excited about where this stuff can go. What we're doing better is we're
42:45
big proponents
42:46
and build with data. We're big proponents in partner data. What we like to do
42:49
with RAPs is try to
42:51
triangulate all the tech that we see that somebody's invested in and try to
42:55
come up with some idea
42:56
about their investment level, but what type of tools they bought. That helps
43:00
profile out the buyer
43:02
and their appetite to buy. You can't always get it right. You can definitely
43:07
see combinations of
43:08
tech stack that work. Where we meet best is where built with next to partner
43:12
data, looking at the
43:13
two data sets, trying to then extrapolate their cycle and their investment
43:20
curve and say, are they
43:22
our ICP? Did we get it right? Did we put them in a right ICP bucket? Then it
43:26
allows us to ask the
43:27
questions, "Hey, we saw that you invested in this. Was that a part of the
43:30
business? Was that something
43:31
you brought in? That's an interesting investment." Now we know they have an
43:36
enterprise budget because
43:37
the tools that they buy, we can go and feel really confident about what we're
43:39
trying to sell.
43:40
I think this was such a phenomenal conversation on how to get through the messy
43:46
middle of the
43:46
partner phase. It's a great analogy that messy middle. You're not in perfection
43:53
land, Jeff,
43:54
but I think you're showing like, "Hey, getting through the other side of this
43:57
is actually,
43:58
there's rewards here. There's gold at the end of this rainbow." If you stick to
44:02
it,
44:02
you follow what Jeff said, you can get through the messy middle and you still
44:06
have messy stuff
44:06
going on. All partner programs do. All businesses do. It doesn't change. It
44:11
just, "Okay, the flywheel
44:12
starts to operate. You start to see the network effects." I think you've done a
44:16
phenomenal job.
44:17
Congrats again on hitting 400 million. It optimizes with a program that's
44:22
generating over 50% of your
44:24
revenue. We appreciate that. Constantly telling the team, you've got to pick
44:30
the right bets.
44:31
You're building a garden. You've got to be feed all the plants. Some of them
44:35
are going to grow
44:35
and some of them are not. We have to be ready to try to commit to a partner,
44:40
but fail fast to be
44:41
able to pivot and do the ones that are more strategic to the business. The more
44:44
critical we are and
44:46
not thinking that a partnership may be deprioritized, not a partnership put
44:50
away. We can re-invigorate
44:52
a partnership after six or nine months. We can focus on more on the strategic
44:55
to our business now
44:57
that helps us succeed. We're constantly balancing the short and the long. You
45:01
have to be flexible
45:02
to dare. You have to be willing to ebb and flow as other partner teams change
45:06
and grow and do.
45:07
Try, do it. We have a good framework here. I think to build a strategic partner
45:13
, we'll continue to play
45:14
that playbook. If the force has changed, we've got to move on and try the next
45:18
with the same playbook.
45:19
You're right. Muscle memory is going to be what gets us there.
45:21
I love it. Thank you so much for guiding us through the messy middle. Jeff,
45:26
Isaac, it's good to see
45:27
you again. We've been trading back and forth on different shows, etc. I'm
45:32
excited for the next
45:33
phase. Do we have anything to plug, Isaac? I don't know if we officially can
45:39
yet. I will just say
45:41
it may or may not be related to our big annual nearbound event. I'll leave it
45:47
at that.
45:49
We've got a couple big announcements that are coming up. We haven't dropped any
45:52
of the
45:53
crazy stuff since the book on y'all. Thanks to everyone that listened.
45:57
My marketing team was like, Jared, they're like, "Wow, things have been really
46:01
nice and calm and
46:02
regular and also too calm and regular." I told them we needed to increase our
46:08
chaos quotient in
46:09
this quarter. Pay attention in the next few episodes. We have some big
46:14
announcements. In fact,
46:16
we've said they're always going to get bigger and better. The next ones get
46:18
bigger and better.
46:19
I'm really excited when we can announce those. Thank you, everyone, for
46:22
listening. If you haven't
46:23
left us a review on the different podcast channels, go do that for us. I was
46:28
just on
46:28
DG's podcast. I'm like, "Oh, he asked for this every time. I'm going to ask you
46:31
. If you've been a
46:32
long-time listener, go leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcast or if you
46:35
're watching on YouTube,
46:36
hit that like and subscribe. I got to throw over one more plug too. Go get the
46:39
nearbound book if
46:40
you haven't read it yet. If you haven't read it yet, go get it. Go send it to
46:43
somebody. If you have
46:45
read it, give a review of that thing too. Jared, if you know people that other
46:48
podcasts,
46:49
Jared is doing the podcast who are talking about the book. More than happy to.
46:53
Now that
46:54
people are ingesting it, there's a lot of great conversations happening on what
46:57
do we do next.
46:57
Keep it going. Keep the conversations going so that we can make it easier.
47:08
[music]