Sales as a Service: Transforming Your Channel Program with LaunchGTM

Starting a company is hard. There are so many things that need to be built, processes to be created, people to be hired. When the company has raised money, the urgency to get everything done all at once is intense. Today we are talking with a company that can help short cut that process.

Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt, here with Sandesh Patel. Welcome to another FUTR podcast.

Today we are talking with the leadership team of Launch GTM, Pat McNallan, and Craig Heile. LaunchGTM is a company designed to accelerate the creation of a sale program for startups. They offer advisory services and automation solutions to accelerating a business' channel engagement strategy for less than the cost of one employee.

So let's talk to Pat and Craig about what a channel program is, why it is so important, and how they build one.

Welcome Pat and Craig

LaunchGTM:  https://launchgtm.com
Pat McNallan:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/pat-mcnallan-0559636/
Craig Heile:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigheile/

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Transcript

Chris Brandt: 0:00

Starting a company is hard. There are so many things that need to be built, processes that need to be created, people to be hired. And when the company has raised money, the urgency to get everything done all at once is intense. Today, we're talking with a company that can help shortcut that process. Hey, everybody. This is Chris Brandt here with Sandesh Patel. He's been gone for a while.

Sandesh Patel: 0:26

Hey, man. It's so good to be back, man. Feels good. First day. Kids just went back to school. Today was the first day. All three of them out of the house. Woo. It's good.

Chris Brandt: 0:38

Welcome back, Sandesh. Today we're talking with the leadership team of LaunchGTM, Pat McNallen and Craig Haley. LaunchGTM, the GTM stands for go to market, is a company designed to accelerate the creation of a sales program for startups. They offer advisory services and automated solutions to accelerate a business's channel engagement strategy for less than the cost of one employee. So let's talk To Pat and Craig about what a channel program is, why it is so important and how they build one. Welcome, Pat and Craig. Hey, Chris, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. You know, I've been watching you guys for a while now, because I think what you are doing is kind of a thing that we've seen over and over in the space that's been really needed for a lot of startups. And Sandesh and I have spent a lot of time, uh, talking to, uh, startups, um, and. So I, I really am excited to hear, you know, how this all comes together and, you know, how, how it works and why it's so important to get going on these things early in a business's life cycle. Um, but let, let's start at the, the channel and like, why is developing a channel program really important? And what was the problem that you identified in the market around that, that you wanted to fix?

Pat McNallan: 1:58

Well, Chris, you know, I think when you think about the channel. You know, channel is in itself drums up a lot of different ideas of what does channel mean? Uh, Craig and I were just talking about this literally an hour ago. Um, should we even be using the word channel? Because does channel mean we're data? What I mean by that is, you know, a lot of people think channel, they think two tier with distribution. They don't think about ecosystems, alliances. Marketplaces, uh, referral networks, and a plethora of others out there that are all channel. So we are actually questioning ourselves as channel, an archaic term, or one that has too much meaning to it already. But, you know, when you think about the channel, outside of the, you know, it's a lot of things. One of the problems that, you know, I saw and what got me super interested in working with LaunchGoToMarket, it is nebulous. There are a lot of processes. There's a lot of things that have to be done, a lot of decisions to be made. Um, I know you announced it as programs, but it's the actual art of the entire engagement of the channel. Yeah. Program is actually just one aspect of it. And even inside a program, it's multiple, multiple, multiple steps. So what got me interested in this is how do we streamline that process? It seemed ripe is absolutely right for a business opportunity to streamline that process, a rapidly mature companies and get them taking advantage advantage of that force multiplier that we as classic channel folks know. Is there for them to grasp as long as they enablement, you know, Craig, what do you think,

Craig Heile: 3:31

you know, I'll add on to that force multiplier because the big thing is, is obviously for when we look at it from a business perspective, it's really about how do we drive revenue and profit for the business bottom line? I mean, the revenue is one thing. Go out and find opportunities with with a partner, bring them in. Hopefully it's partner led. They cannot automatically manage it themselves after you do the appropriate enablement. But more importantly, From a business perspective. How is it that I drive additional margin for my business by offloading services, customer success, which a lot of folks aren't even looking at right now, um, you know, how do you extend that out through your, through your partners

Chris Brandt: 4:06

when we look at uh, the, the sales side of things, you know, we're kind of all familiar with the channel and, you know, what it means to operate with a channel. I think a lot of people on the buying side of that equation aren't familiar with all the things that go into the sales process, right? Because they work with a salesperson or they talk to a salesperson from a vendor, right? A manufacturer and they don't understand necessarily all the things that goes. To work that through, you know, quoting that deal, getting it, you know, produced or manufactured, even in some cases, getting it to a distribution or, or getting it, you know, to the, to the, the vendor in between, and then getting it to the person. There's a lot of steps that go into that, a lot of negotiations and a lot of relationships that have to be built.

Craig Heile: 4:53

The fun thing about it is it's. It's really a great journey. The part that a lot of folks don't realize is the journey takes time, especially when you're talking about through partners and through channel. No doubt. The big key piece to it is, is you look at it and say, well, how do I get the market fastest? Well, it's always through direct selling. Unfortunately, that doesn't scale. That goes back to the force multiplier. Go to the next piece, which is when you start selling through a channel, you have a value chain that you have to operate within. And setting each one of those members of that value chain takes time and effort and intention and attention. So think of it, let's just take it through a simple marketplace, you know, while people think, well, great, we'll get right into marketplace. So I'm the vendor, I'm going to go ahead and post it on marketplace. Voila, they all come. No, they don't. Right. I have to develop a relationship. with those folks. First, bring them in. Understand that there's actually a transaction point. And then there's also an attribution point of you can get paid on this. Secondarily to that is is now staying top of mind with that partner and being there with them. Then you have the added complexity of in a marketplace. Let's take a cloud service provider. You have to work with their sales people to start getting introductions into their end users because they're getting paid on the marketplace opportunities that go full through the marketplace. So this takes time. You know, so if I look at it and say, what is that time period? First, you have to build the programs out, understand what the incentives are. You have to then build your, your documentation out for the program itself, because you'll leave yourself a legal risk. Once those are built. Now I've got something that I have to post out and I have to post it somewhere. What technologies do I use? So once I'm there, who's going to go out and promote this in front of the marketplace or in front of the other partners that I'm trying to work with. So there's a lot of parts and pieces that move at the same time to get there. And one of the biggest issues that we see overall is, is, you know, from, uh, you talk about from an executive perspective at a SAS company, they think, well, it's going to take us a couple months to get there. Well, logically on paper, it can. Unfortunately, there's lack of knowledge of the resources that you have in place. There's also, you know, there aren't relationships already built. So this all takes time to build all the in between pieces. I'm talking in general on this now.

Chris Brandt: 7:04

On the flip side of all this, the advantages of building a channel program that, you know, for people who are kind of unfamiliar as to why one would want to do this is that to build up a whole sales organization, establish those relationships, be effective in selling, selling into all of those organizations is really difficult. And um, what a channel program does is allow you to work with, you know, value added resellers and, and folks like that who already have the people there and a sales. Organization ready to go out and pound the streets. So it can be like you say, a force multiplier and, and getting the message out there. And I think the other thing that's important on that is when you're talking about startups, early revenues are super important and it really can change the valuation of those companies. And so doing what you're doing can really make a big difference on startups, right?

Craig Heile: 7:57

Yeah. And I want to make a comment to that because the, by just having. A program built doesn't mean that that revenue is coming in, right? So it's a simultaneous activity of direct selling and building the channel program when it's the right time to be able to start looking at that increase in scale of revenue to start really changing the multiple of the business.

Pat McNallan: 8:18

We all know on this call, you actually got to know how to sell your product before working with the champ. Yeah, if you don't know how to sell your product or don't have the message, you're not on point. If the channel is not going to be your, your best test bed to go figure out your message, you should go have your message ready to go prepare and enable those teams with that message and have them work on your behalf. Otherwise, I mean, that we get that from customers, they have a terrible experience with the channel and they really haven't even had their message really worked out yet. It's tough to get a bunch of people to work on something they don't know what they're selling

Chris Brandt: 8:54

There's a lot of nuances to it, too, because, you know, one, not every company is right to have a channel program, right? Because, you know, there may not be enough appropriate margin in it or whatever, right? Or deal size, you know, to do that. But the other thing is that, you know. If, if you're approaching a salesperson, they're interested in making money and in order to make money, they have to be able to achieve an appropriate margin and knowing the industry and knowing what competitors are giving in terms of margin and how, how people would be incentivized to sell the product, um, is really important. Right?

Craig Heile: 9:26

Yeah, absolutely. And that's where it's, it's often a black hole to many, right? Because your founders inside of most companies are part of the product. They've come up with a great idea and they've operated in it. And oftentimes have limited experience in the channel and also just in different types and routes to market through the channel, so therefore don't understand exactly what are those benchmarks that you want to be aiming at to be competitive, which is one of the biggest pieces is how is I a small as a small company? Do I compete in this large environment against much bigger competitors that already have mature programs and already know what's working within the partners? How do you get into that as quickly as possible? That is the absolute challenge

Chris Brandt: 10:05

for young companies to, um, they might not have the completeness of product that a more mature company has. They might not have the kind of documentation. So oftentimes there's sort of an educational sales process anyways in there to sort of communicate the vision and having that enablement program to, you know, enable the partners to be able to tell that story is really important because, you know, a small company. Can only get to so many people, right?

Craig Heile: 10:30

Yeah, and going to what Pat was saying before about you've got to sell this first to the customer, understand what those pieces are, because you can't possibly work with a partner and get them to sell in the way that you want. And plus you're going to lose traction with your own salespeople, direct salespeople, because this partner is selling, you know, XYZ this way and the other partners selling ABC in a completely different way. And as a sales rep at the at the vendor, I just start losing any type of, um, uh, of, uh, of credibility with that particular partner. I won't say credibility. I lose confidence in them, and I want to make sure that I do everything the same. So that's the ultimate thing is to get it down to how do you sell your solution? What documentation needs to be there to support that partner to then be able to train them on that. So now it's a consistent process and you have confidence throughout the entire chain.

Sandesh Patel: 11:23

I think one of the biggest challenges in this, in this whole ecosystem is the trust. You got to trust each other and you want to make sure. That everybody's winning, you know, that's what partnerships are all about and creating those partnerships. So both sides feel like they're getting an equal part of the deal. I think it's very, very important. I think where these partnerships really struggle is when. One part, the one person is winning a lot and the other person is winning very little. That, that partnership is, it's just naturally, you can't ask, you know, why aren't they selling my product? I think, you know, your answer, like to what Chris said, they're worried about how much am I going to get paid.

Craig Heile: 12:06

Yeah. And the words that I use value chain are very intentional because that's exactly what this is. It has to be commensurate at every level and everyone has to feel like they're working together as a team to move through. When you look at the most successful channel programs, that's what's happening is everyone's getting the right support that they need. They're driving it to the end user. They're, they're proliferating a consistent result for that end user customer. You know, that, that's where real success comes in and it doesn't have to be a complex You know, solution. I mean, I ran the poly, the poly partner program, and we were able to align that very nicely. So selling just a simple piece of hardware that, you know, hey, it's a piece of hardware. There's a gajillion of them out there, but having everyone inside that value chain understands what they're doing at each step to add value and be valuable at each step and get renumerated appropriately for is a big deal.

Sandesh Patel: 12:55

But what you guys are doing, from my understanding, is you're bringing not just your expertise from a leadership perspective, every leader at LawGTM has been doing this for a long time and is very disciplined in it, but you guys also have software that you've created that kind of helps expedite this process. Is that, is that true too?

Pat McNallan: 13:13

So when we talk about it as a process or the value chain or life cycle, whatever term you want to use from beginning to, you know, the next milestone. Craig's organization and his vision have put together a fantastic set of. Uh, you know, we, we argue internally. Are they tools? Are they apps? Are they missions? Uh, these are good arguments, by the way, because we're, uh, you know, as we're growing this biz. Uh, but logically, logically steps you through just exactly what you need when you need it. Uh, like I said, bringing a program together, onboarding partners, activating a partner. It is a process. I know that's a boring, dull term, but when it's done right, it's elegant and it's super efficient and you look really good at it. I mean, Craig's created this and Craig, I've given you props here now, bring it home as to what it is and how we do it. But this is something that we see people that want to consume it and really brings them along quicker than if they tried to do it on their own with no help at all.

Chris Brandt: 14:18

Yeah, I would love to hear what the process strategy is around. How you do that.

Craig Heile: 14:23

Yeah, let me take you through the genesis real quick because I think putting real terms to it helps. Yeah. So the problem through school of hard knocks. I like to say I have a doctorate of school of hard knocks from just getting just you make mistake after mistake and you get a lot of wins out of it. And the reward is really good. Um, one of the big mistakes is, is going into both large and small companies and building channel programs. It's. Like you got, you know, you empty the entire desk and you start over and it's like, well, no, this is the same thing over and over from a high level to say, you know, and to the same degree of you say a business is in business to make money, right? That's it's only purpose. So, well, that's the highest level. It's revenue and profit. So same thing goes for channel programs, you know, at the highest level, those processes in order to be able to drive revenue and profit for business are the same and how you do it is the unique difference. So, uh, real life example, building documents for a very, very large program, 45,000 um, partners with 135 distributors across, you know, dozens and dozens of countries globally having to take that and actually get documentation done doing just a basic, you know, the partner program overview guide, the terms and conditions, your partner agreement, your distribution agreement and every other program agreement, you know, to build that out was again, wiping the table clean and starting fresh. And it's like, no, the process is the same. You start with the template, you review it. Thank you. You then bring it to legal, you start working through and I'm simplifying this, but you go through the process with them of iterating, especially on a global basis, making sure it's good in theater. And then you come out and present it and put it in production. So to do that on a smart sheet makes no sense whatsoever. You know, I don't know who's who, who's doing what, at what point, especially when you got 100 people working on this, you know, that's one side of it. The other side of it is, is I want to make a change to a program. So I have a whole new route to market coming in for a new product. Well, how do I build that program? We start all over again, and it's like, no, we don't start these over. So that was the genesis of where we are with the platform. So what we do is, is we actually provide consulting with support of a platform. And it's not when we talk about a tool platform, but we have playbooks that we operate from. That we allow for our customers to help build their own playbooks for specific routes to market from there. Then what we do is we help them to be able to build out their documentation, whether they choose to do it or not themselves. We can support them with it, but we give them the processes to track, manage, monitor the documentation development and execution process. Then what do you do with that document? You have to put that somewhere. It has to go out online somewhere because it's referred to in your in your terms and conditions. Okay. Review the terms and conditions on our website, so it has to go somewhere. So we provide a portal that allows resource access to that. Right. The next step is, well, now I need to do deal registration with my customers, with my partners. I need to activate them. So I give them a deal registrations. Next step is how do I engage my partners effectively? Well, business plan is one of them. Let's give you a proper business plan to execute effectively and consistently every time you touch your partner. This goes on and on down through all the way through activation for account mapping for, um, for what we call QBR inclusion. So how do you get your message in front of your customers as quickly as possible as a partner and track that all the way through as the vendor? To hold yourself accountable, as well as your partners,

Chris Brandt: 17:46

do you even like you have programs to, you know, vet the, the partners in terms of their financial stability and their ability to, you know, sufficient credit and things like that to work with you. I mean, do you, do you go to that level as well?

Craig Heile: 18:00

Yeah. So on the onboarding process, we call it enrollment. So they fill out the form and then there's behind the scenes. We have. Actual activities that we have our vendors walk through, which is what are the criteria specifically that you need to look? So if it's looking at D and B, finding out what the credit ratings are and making sure that there's an effective. Um, so they check those boxes as they go through to effectively on board that partner to see if they're. A partner we want to bring on board

Pat McNallan: 18:24

if you think about that enrollment and onboard phase that craig's talking about With our solution we remove 70 Of the manual trivial tasks that have to be done and frankly are done every single time No matter what partner no matter who it is Uh, we can remove those with the solution this day and age based on what's going out in the macro economy right now, freeing up resources to actually interact with the actual partner is something that people are really pursuing versus just chasing down emails, chasing down schedules, chasing down all these little trivial things, if that can be automated, or now that it is automated, You should be working on more high value activities. And that's just part of, that's just part one segment of that life cycle of your program.

Sandesh Patel: 19:12

It sounds a little bit like sales as a service to me. To a degree. You know, like I think that's what you guys provide is this acceleration path. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you're helping sales.

Craig Heile: 19:21

Yeah, we absolutely are.

Sandesh Patel: 19:22

That is right. And you're providing a service.

Chris Brandt: 19:25

And you're automating it.

Pat McNallan: 19:26

Yeah, we're making, you know, if you look at Series, BCD invested companies, we're making them look a heck of a lot bigger to large organizations, major channel players that we all know and love work at, been working with, um, we make them look like they're ready for that prime time and not only look, they are because the plans in place, the tools are in place. And they've been brought through the process to really have their message be delivered through organizations at large.

Sandesh Patel: 19:56

I think when Craig had that whole, all those details that he went through that you guys can provide, I think what that speaks to is how difficult this all is and how complicated it is. There's a reason why we have these huge channel organizations, you know, if you look at these vendors, they have massive, massive amount of people that you need to hire. In order just to support all these partners, um, and so if you guys can help operationalize that a little bit, you're right, that actually building real relationships is gonna be more valuable for them.

Pat McNallan: 20:28

Sandesh, the thing that I love is when we work with, uh, some of the, you know, emerging technology players. We know the channel. I'm like, Oh, fantastic. That's great. We hired someone from X, Y, Z, a name that, you know, household name. If you're in the channel, you'd know it. I'm like, okay, that's fantastic. My bet is, you know, a piece of the channel, either the sales side of it, the partner side of it, the program side of the operation side of it. But to say you know the channel because you hired one person that person's got to be very special and unique, right? To have that kind of thing because once again, the channel is big. It's built with processes. It's nebulous There's a lot of players and a lot of different segments And, you know, really getting that kickstart or, you know, getting held up on a different pedestal so you can see on a level playing field, I think it's extremely important, especially for the smaller folks.

Chris Brandt: 21:18

Yeah. With all these companies that you work with, like what are, what are the, what are the biggest gaps you see them having? I mean, like what, what aspects of their, Business. I mean, within the building a channel, you know, program, what's, what are always the, the ones you go, Oh God, here's the biggest gap we always see.

Craig Heile: 21:35

Biggest gap is, is their understanding of building a program. The next biggest gap is what it actually takes to execute in front of the customer to get them to the point of, and I'm sorry, with the partner to get them to actually putting it in front of their customers. Those are the two biggest gaps. Unrealistic expectations. Yeah. I mean, you know, they're, they're, they think it's this time. And it's out here because they missed all the A through D, you know, A through X stuff when they're just trying to get that Y and Z.

Chris Brandt: 22:01

They think it's this time because they, that's how, when we need the sales, that's usually the way it goes. We need sales in this window. Yeah.

Craig Heile: 22:08

Yeah. And to add on to what I just said, so that, you know, if they're trying to get to Y and Z on this end. What we try to do is, is help them to shrink that time from A to X as quickly as possible. So, you know, we literally do that to 50%. Like, if it takes, you know, 6 to 8 months, we're down at 3 to 4 months to get them there. Yeah. So, in the way that we've operationalized this. So, it just takes and alleviates them from having to do all this work themselves and focus on things and turn the lights off on the business, on the channel business that is, you know, for a certain period of time before they can get there. So, we literally speed that up.

Pat McNallan: 22:44

The other gap is an organizational gap, typically, you know, in the those earlier stage companies, the highest ranking channel person is the channel person or the channel chief with a small organization, right? Maybe the CRO, the rest of the organization channel is foreign most of the time. I would say a majority of the time. So one of the gaps that I know, because I see Craig do it every single day. Is we feel we we feel that business case confidence ratio for the people that understand channel to have business conversations with the leadership above them, the CEO, the CFO, and sometimes even the CRO, so they know, uh. That they have, you know, they can justify doing the program, justify bringing on more people, uh, and really explain how it's going to help the business. So there's a big gap there we fill.

Chris Brandt: 23:39

Yeah. And I got to mention the vendors out there are also like, man, we really want. This company is manufacturer to get a good channels program together because it's a hot mess. And I wish these guys would come in and fix it for them. So we didn't have to deal with that mess

Craig Heile: 23:55

Yeah, we've worked with several of those folks from a hyperscaler perspective to do just that because they need them out there to help them grow their own. Platform or their own product

Chris Brandt: 24:04

on that. I mean, we've, we've talked a bit about, you know, like the idea of new, new go to markets, the new GTM and things like that. And, and, you know, disintermediation in that process as well. You know, we see the Amazon marketplace and, you know, the various marketplaces of some of these, you know, hyperscalers like you just, you mentioned, how, how do you, I mean, cause you know, obviously that's a. Strategy and and and it can be a channel strategy even working through that process. How do you guys integrate? Newer model with the older model.

Craig Heile: 24:35

Yeah. So inside that model, so what we're doing is, is we're helping a, the hyperscaler understand if you have high value ISVs or SAS companies that you need to bring in, how do you help them to become channel ready? So that's a number one, because a lot of them. You know, the beautiful thing about what's happening in today's world is it's easier to go to market than ever through a marketplace. Right? So any company can come in and just post a shingle and then and then go or hang their shingle and go. Unfortunately, that shingle doesn't have much on it. There's not much death weight, you know, shape or anything. So that's what The hyperscaler wants them to do is come in and actually have something of substance to be able to be there and be a presence on that marketplace

Chris Brandt: 25:14

that those marketplaces are very, very crowded. Oh, so getting to stand out is important.

Craig Heile: 25:19

Yeah, just just have a program is standing out, you know, just having a sense of, you know, how the, how the transacting works is is a big piece of it. But, uh, but yeah, that's, you know, that's one way for the hyperscaler that we work with them is to be able to get them to have. Channel ready and, you know, interactive ready ISVs.

Pat McNallan: 25:37

Yeah, one of the, one of those areas you also see, Chris, um, even with the hyperscalers or the big global players is the matchmaking piece. Yeah. You know, a lot of folks technically enable. Uh, these sass players, I mean, get them up and running, but then they, most of them can't be sold by themselves, right? Are they, they really sell better together with two or three other pieces or maybe more? Yeah. In that matchmaking, the right stack, uh, being able to not only to technically integrate them, but also sell them as a business. Uh, you know, a business package of or a stack, like I was saying, that's extremely important and most of the time you got to go through a lot of the same steps to be able to match make on the business side as you are, as you're building a channel, because if they're not ready to have a relationship with another partner. It's really tough for that to be successful.

Chris Brandt: 26:31

I'm sure you've had some great success stories out there. Could you talk a little bit about a company that you helped and, you know, walk us through how, how it all went and, you know, what, what it did for them?

Craig Heile: 26:42

So I get to work intimately. I'm very fortunate and working very closely with these organizations and working all the way through the chain of command. Yeah. And, um, one, I will say I'll give you one that is a, a, um, they do a very complex. Packaging and security, you know, just let's just say they're a security company sass company and they're having a lot of the way that their platform works is it actually operates at a very high level that has to go in through its complex environment that has to go in through typically an SI okay. So as I started working with them, one of the key pieces is they're saying, well, we just can't get into partners. We don't even know if we want to be in channel. So we're talking to the chief revenue officer and he's like, Hey, we've tried it. We just can't do it. And so, you know, one of the first things we instill is just because someone couldn't do it before, it doesn't mean it can't be done. So, um, so went in and work with the CRO and then also the person they put in charge of channels and built an entirely, I won't even say entirely, I will say we helped them to recraft their message specifically to a route to market, which was global SIs. And so as a small company, they weren't able to get really good sound voices inside there because they were talking about this small ish kind of opportunity as we started fleshing it out and built what we call the value proposition to that partner. I want to say like that's something magical. No, it's not right. But what we do is walk through and identify. What's the attribute of that partner type? What do they need to hear? What's the problem that you're solving for them? What's the benefit? I mean, normal stuff, nothing of any rocket science there, but then coming out with what the value messages and then what a variance of value messaging there are. And then determining from that, what's the real remuneration that that partner gets and calculating that out and putting a use case, a real use case together on if a partner does this in this size of company, they should see this much of revenue to them. And so we broke that down and created what we call our executive, or it's a, it's a channel executive playbook. They operate against and they go in and they have an executive briefing with a, with an si. Okay. So we developed the messaging to that si and there's a very specific process that we do that with, right? Um, from that they were able to go in with the programmatic elements, along with that remuneration, with the messaging of how their company can help them, um, grow their revenues and, and in this case, managed services and professional services as well. Within a very short period of time, they had more opportunities coming through these global sis. Then they could actually handle, remember it's one person. So they ended up with about 15 opportunities within a month, literally. Um, so, you know, just really putting these parts and pieces together in a logical flow that allows someone who's not typically used to selling through channel and driving and delivering it out there and getting it in their voice. It makes a huge difference in that case.

Pat McNallan: 29:29

Yeah, the Chris, the one that it's a Craig deal. So I get to, uh, I get to talk about Craig here. Another one of these playbook development, another emerging tech company, uh, you know, has a partner program, but it's, it's, it's, it's very new. Uh, they claw and fight and they get a meeting with a pretty big player, a national player. Everyone would know the name here in the US, uh, and crazy in the middle of the playbook. They're like, hey, we got this meeting in 24 hours. Craig's like, can I see what you're going to do? And you know, what you're going to show worked with them completely out of, you know, doesn't matter if it was out of scope, we completely worked with them, redefine, redid the pitch. They like this was the best meeting we've ever had with a company that size. We stayed longer. They kept asking questions. They were really engaged. And I'm like, that's when I knew, you know, joining Craig and the team here, I knew we had something because we, we did exactly what we said we, we set out to do. We could really elevate players to, you know, play in a much bigger field with a mature program and a mature approach. And that was just one meeting. Yeah. I thought that was super cool. I love. That's one of my repeat stories there.

Craig Heile: 30:40

I'll add one other piece to it. So we've been talking a lot about the consulting. So the consulting is supported by the way that we collect the information and we do what we call channel therapy, essentially. So the customer already knows what they're going to be asked because the system actually asked them to provide that information beyond that. What we do is we have. Implementations where we have the technology in place, which is all of the activities and the accountability that we've talked about, you know, so we have one customer from a success perspective who was able to bring in that they had three partners and as they're out recruiting, they have problems onboarding those partners because it was one person who is responsible for recruiting and then onboarding them. And what we found literally is 60 percent of their time was given back to them as a result of. Being able to put the partner into a enrollment process and an onboard process, which then led them to getting into account mapping account introductions within literally two months from where they were. They had just started the program up. We built it with them and. Bringing it through that system was able to get them to activating those partners that much faster.

Chris Brandt: 31:47

I can definitely see, see the value here. Um, and if, if somebody wanted to get a piece of this value, where should they go? Who should they talk to?

Pat McNallan: 31:57

Uh, we're on, of course, LinkedIn. We have our website, launchgtm. com. You can reach out to any of us. Uh, on LinkedIn through our profiles or on Twitter, uh, if that's the best, uh, but we're easy to find, uh, we put our name everywhere that we're posted on the socials or the web. Uh, so feel free to reach out, Craig or myself, or even just a general info, all of it comes back to us, and we'd be more than happy to have that conversation with you.

Chris Brandt: 32:24

Yeah, and I'll put links in the show notes, and I'll probably put a thing somewhere around here too, maybe right in the middle.

Craig Heile: 32:30

Yeah, and if it's actually even, even if it's appropriate to call out SaaSTR that will be there at the beginning of next month. SaaSTR, okay. It's a, it's a, it's a networking event. For SaaS companies, uh, they globally, they actually have 10,000 companies going there. So it's a pretty big, you know, so a lot of the folks who may be even listening.

Chris Brandt: 32:49

I should get myself there. When is, when is that?

Pat McNallan: 32:50

It's the 6th, 7th, 8th of September. It's at the San Mateo community or convention center. I think it's up to about 12,000, 13,000 attendees right now.

Chris Brandt: 33:01

Wow. Wow, man. Who knew?

Pat McNallan: 33:06

There's VCs there. There's analysts there. There's of course, a ton of SaaS companies. And then of course, there's a bunch of SaaS companies that made it. And there's all sorts of. Interactive presentations, uh, all sorts of networking events built around it. It's going to be our first year, but we've been investing quite a bit of time and preparation for it.

Chris Brandt: 33:27

Okay, well, go see them. Do you have a booth number or anything that people can reach you at at SaaSTR?

Pat McNallan: 33:31

No booth, but look us up on the brain dates. Okay. We are setting many brain dates. That's our networking, uh, A networking center app.

Chris Brandt: 33:39

So if you're going to SaaSTR, set up a brain date with LaunchGTM. Excellent. Well, you know,

Pat McNallan: 33:47

You never thought you'd say those

Chris Brandt: 33:48

words ever in your life, did you? No, no, I mean, now, now, now you got me curious. Um, well, so thanks so much you guys for coming on. And, uh, I appreciate what you're doing. I think what you're doing is, uh, sort of a, you know, a thing that, you know, maybe the sales folks have only really, you know, An understanding of, but it really drives so much of the whole process, uh, in technology and the technology, you know, procurement of equipment and services and software. Um, it's, uh, it's, it's, I'm sure really, uh, valuable at all the companies that you work with. So, uh, thanks for doing what you're doing and, uh, really appreciate it. Excited to see where you go from here and thanks for being on.

Craig Heile: 34:31

Thanks for having us.

Pat McNallan: 34:32

Well, thank you, Chris Sandesh. Really appreciate it being on FUTR.tv.

Chris Brandt: 34:35

Thanks for watching. I'd love to hear from you in the comments. And if you could please give us like, think about subscribing and I will see you in the next one.