060 - Global Perspectives, Local Realities: Can Channel Programs Ever Find the Right Balance?

One global strategy to guide them all, right? FALSE. 

Asking both Channel Heads to Program managers, are you sacrificing the unique spice of local markets for the bland convenience of global strategies? Join us in this episode as we spill the tea on the heated debate, revealing the secrets, struggles, and maybe a few scandals behind the scenes.

Alex and Rick dive deep into the controversy of global dominance versus local flair in channel management as they compare the US and European ways of working, peculiarities and why it’s important to build top down, and bottom up, simultaneously. How does this blueprint make sense?  

We underline the importance of a long-term vision in building and scaling programs, blending it with short-term feedback. The duo then take you through the battleground where global and regional perspectives often clash, as they unravel channel programs that work universally yet resonate locally. As they delve into the trenches of distribution in Europe and the US, the devil in the details – language and customization. 

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#partnerrelationshipmanagement #channelmarketing #partnerenablement #Throughchannelmarketingautomation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome back to Parking Ships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of parking ships and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Rick van der Bosch and I'm the CEO and founder at Channex, and I'm here together with Alex Wittford, vp Parkinson's, channex Alex, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 0:22

Yeah, I'm doing really well. I'm on one today, so I think we're going to have an absolute argument discussing Europe, US it's a bit of a rider cup special, almost and how we discuss how programs should differ between those two areas.

Speaker 1: 0:35

Yeah, because I think that's indeed the thing that we're hearing all the time from our customers at the moment. Right, Like everyone is looking at how can we make things more programmatic, more scalable with the resources we have. But then we're designing that program in the US, usually from a global perspective. But then it's indeed. How do we make sure we get the right nuances and for today, we're going to focus mainly on Europe to get it right in the local regions as well.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Yeah, so look, we spend our life talking to channel leaders, right? Some of those based in the US, some of those based in Europe, and it's really tempting to build a one size fits all solution. The whole world is going to look this way and then what you'll find out is oh, actually, now that it's landed in Europe, it's not having the same effects, right, and I think this is the battle that's constantly faced what's automated and what's scalable versus what's nuanced and what's detailed, and what's the balance between getting those two things right? Because they're really easy to go call, everyone come up with your own strategy, and then you find out nothing's aligned. Really easy also to go call one strategy fits everywhere, and then also you miss that alignment.

Speaker 1: 1:39

And I think that's the forever ongoing friction between global and the regions, right Like global wants to have it as scalable as possible and the regions want to have it as personalized and as like customized to their region as possible. And I think today we're going to do a little bit of that battle together and discussion in terms of what's the right balance. I think that's the end goal where we want to get to in this podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Yeah, I've spent a lot of my career. So this is why I'm on one today, because I've spent a lot of my career arguing with Americans around the detail of Europe and why we're really special. And I know plenty of Americans on the other side of the pond who go, oh yeah, but we hear every region special, every country special, they all need their own plan. So, yeah, it's definitely a debate that I don't think will solve today, but hopefully we can add some detail around it.

Speaker 1: 2:24

I like it. Can you give us an example of a topic, for example, that used to be like a thing where you had a lot of discussion around in terms of, like, customizing that more to the European region?

Speaker 2: 2:36

Yeah, so I've worked in distribution for years, right, and so distribution is something that I know inside and out. And what you'll see in the US is typically a lot less distribution I a lot less distributors deployed. Why? One language, one tax, one legal system, and so you can have a distributor with huge coverage that does a really really good job facilitating that business. But where I came from, you'd have three or four distributors per country.

Speaker 2: 3:03

Then you look at Europe 20 odd countries, 30 odd countries. Suddenly you're like, oh my God, there's like 50 distributors being deployed, maybe a couple covering a few territories. But then you'll have the niece specialists that either focus on one area, one type of proposition, one type of product or a combination of all three. And there is real value in those distributors because they're really specialized and know their market, versus one that covers all of Europe and can never have that same level of detail. And so that was a constant cause of friction, because the US go, oh my God, why do we have all these distributors? We've got to hire all these distribution managers, which is really complicated, versus Europe pushing back and going no, no, no. But they provide huge value because they really really understand their market.

Speaker 1: 3:48

Yeah, I think. Indeed, what you see in the US is that you have a couple of broadliners who together own the full market. But in Europe it's very different. And even if you work with a broadliner, let's say a TD Cynics or an Ingram Micro, they might be very strong in Europe overall, but everyone is stronger in one region or one country versus the other, and that's why you can never make it work just with one European contract. Right that you have it for the full region and have everything sorted.

Speaker 2: 4:15

Yeah, so like one. You know, I've worked with TD Cynics in the past. In fact I called them a broadliner to their face and they got really annoyed. So sorry TD Cynics for that, but they, the power of signing them is I signed one agreement and rolled out Zoom all across Europe with one signature. Like it's crazy, like that's so hard to do. So they've done an amazing work from a back office, a legal attacks perspective to get their contracts in such an order that it's one signature, because otherwise typically you have to sign lots of agreements. It's really really complicated and so they've done an amazing job to the vendor for that.

Speaker 2: 4:51

But obviously there's a trade off. Right when you have coverage from Russia all the way through to Portugal, which for the geographically challenged is basically all of Europe, that's really, really hard to do. You can't have the level of penetration and market understanding in each of those territories. You can't be strong everywhere. So the question I always pose and position to the Americans is cool. So do we understand what that trade off is? Where are we going to win, where are we going to lose and what are we going to do to scale our channel penetration so that we know where those challenges are and what are we going to do to deepen our value within distribution to ensure that we can continue to be successful?

Speaker 1: 5:30

And I think the word trade off that you mentioned is very important there, and I think that's what the global program managers are constantly doing, like they are trading off, like how far can I personalize with the resources that we actually have, because, indeed, every region has their own demands. But then at a certain moment, you need to say, yeah, but this is how far we go, this is how far we standardize. Where do you see like most friction between global and Europe, in this case, on those particular matters?

Speaker 2: 5:57

Yeah, so there's a couple which are like requirements, right, there are legal and tax requirements differences in Europe versus US. So one that is fairly close to my heart is Brexit happened, which made everything a lot more complicated, because then there's a different tax and import structure in the UK versus 25 miles away in France, right, so that's complicated. So those are. That's a hard requirement that you have to solve. For another good example would be language. It's great to do marketing, but if you're doing marketing in English in France, don't even bother, like literally don't bother, because no one is going to do anything with that. And so my, my hard advice is work out what your must haves are, and so there is some tax stuff, there are some language stuff that you have to do, or don't even bother, landing in the market, and so that level of nuance there is no discussion as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 2: 6:49

Or, if you don't have the resource, then I would seriously consider whether it's even worthwhile trying to expand into Europe If you only have English content. Just focus on England, focus on the UK and the US, and grow that way, and then, once you've got the capability to do translation and everything else, then you can go further, but that's really where the conversation starts. Then there's loads of nuances that you can then get into and that's the constant trade off that programs and the regional leaders will be getting into to go. You know we're special, we need this versus programs going calm down, we don't have the resources. There are other priorities.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Yeah, I think those two that you mentioned are really important indeed because we've experienced it firsthand with other customers that we help, like, for example. Indeed, if you launch marketing in certain regions, you need to provide it in their local language or partners don't even bother of participating in your program towards their, towards their end user. And indeed the example you gave, france, is very important. Certain Europe is very important, ben looks and Nordic. You're already a bit easier with English, but still the preference really is the language, so you really need to make sure you hit that one home.

Speaker 1: 7:56

But another one, indeed from a legal perspective, for example, is GDPR, which is extremely strict in Germany, and we also found out there the more and more we're helping customers entering in the Germany market with their program from a marketing perspective that if you don't have super clear story about GDPR and everything set up in your program especially towards GDPR, and then in Germany the strongest suit the partners will not participate, they will not. Onboard, you can keep like making, trying to get them enthusiastic for it, but you need to get that specific part sorted before you can actually scale it in a region like Germany, and I think that's indeed those two are really the must haves.

Speaker 2: 8:35

Yeah, I know from my time at zoom we had a GDPR statement. I could track how much that was opened and I just know, culturally, people would say, yeah, we need to see your GDPR thing. And if they're in England, I'd say, yeah, here it is. You can go on the website and no one ever would. You know, just me saying, yeah, we've got it. Culturally was enough.

Speaker 2: 8:54

But you just balance that against Germans and they will go, cool, thank you for sending over. And then they will go through in detail and come back with questions. And so that's just a cultural market that you need to have very, very distinguished policies because people just are different. Right, we're mostly the same, but there are key differences that, if you want to land incredibly well or if you want to continue to scale as well as possible, if you aren't looking at those nuances and those differences, it will be hard for you to be successful or it's going to dampen the level of growth that you're trying to achieve.

Speaker 2: 9:25

This is stuff that I've learned managing wider and wider organizations across Europe and I couldn't believe the differences, right, and you go oh, there's certain stuff that we need to be aware of and it must be much harder, right. If you're an American, you've never been outside California and your entire program is designed from there to understand those differences, and that's what you've got to rely on your local organization to feed those back to you so that you can go cool. We need a GDPR policy written in German so that people will understand it. Download it and read it, because that's going to help us scale more effectively.

Speaker 1: 9:57

And in how far do you think it's the responsibility of the global program management to actually get those cultural or market nuances from specific countries or regions, yeah, into the program?

Speaker 2: 10:07

Cool, so if I put my leadership hat on. How do I empower the local organizations to give me that feedback, right? So it's incumbent on me to set up the process, to evangelize why we need that level of feedback and to commit to those organizations that we are going to work through this as well as we can. But then it's incumbent on the local organizations to feedback what's relevant, right? I hear this time and time again. It drives me crazy Everything's an emergency. If you are an everything's an emergency person, no one will listen to you over time because you go we must have this. And then it's like three weeks later, we must have it. And if you're always crying that there's a fire, eventually people will stop believing you right? And so it's incumbent on both parties to set up that communication flow so the local organizations know how to feedback and what to feedback. But if everything's top priority, nothing's top priority. So it's important that you're only feeding back what really is going to change the game and not just every little nice to have that you can think of.

Speaker 1: 11:12

That's a very valid point. I think if you go for more like a bottom up approach where you get a lot of feedback from the regions, then as a region, it's very important to understand that the things you do flag should be super relevant and highly important. Because if you just throw like a bunch of things like this is everything I need and it's too much, then it's also not possible for global anymore to standardize. Well, if you're very critical and ask them for the top two or three things you actually need within your region, what the global program managers are looking for, yeah, I mean, it really is.

Speaker 2: 11:42

I, you know I'm hot on these things, so I get really annoyed, but to me it's lack of respect, right? If you're asking me to say, hey, can you give me a list of what's your priorities, and I throw a hundred priorities over to you, it means that I'm being lazy because I'm not taking the time to go through everything I think and give you a proper list. I'm just throwing stuff at you and go. Hopefully you'll fix it. I'm not being respectful to your time and to your priority. So if I'm going to ask you to do work, I'm going to put some work in as well. Right, that's what the partnership is. That's what the channel is so great, it's cool. Here are the 10 things that I would like, but here are the things that I need. Can you work your way through the list? And once you get to number four, we're now in nice to have territory. But I'll try and give you credible information and data so that you know the impact. And so that's one of the things that I'd really stress is, when we make those requests over to global program, people make sure they understand the context of what you're asking for. Make sure that they understand the outcome that this will drive.

Speaker 2: 12:44

So there's a big difference between guys. We don't have a GDPR statement publicly available and it's really complicated. German partners won't sign up if we don't have this. It's a hard requirement versus hey, I would like nuanced language between Austria and Germany. There's some very slight differences in how we should market to those two different markets. That's a really nice to have thing, great if you're Coca-Cola and you've got billions and billions and billions to spend on direct marketing and then you're going to do those nuances. That's a very nice to have function. And so if you don't distinguish between those two things, I mean you're just not giving the guy a chance to be successful. That's really hard if you're lacking that context. So it's really important that we give everyone the information for them to be successful.

Speaker 1: 13:33

And specifically the language thing is an interesting one because there, indeed, you see, there's so many different type of nuances between different countries, but in general there's, of course, a couple of languages that are being spoken in a lot of countries worldwide and that's also what we see like. Try to standardize that from a global perspective as much as possible. We see, with a lot of customers and vendors were speaking to, they have approximately eight focus languages that they provide all the content in. I think that's actually quite good already, and then from there you allow the regions to customize that to their own specific market nuance or their own specific cultural difference in terms of language, etc. I think that's the way to go eventually, because you can't standardize much further than those eight to ten languages.

Speaker 2: 14:19

No, the only other thing that I'd really stress is think big, right. So we talk about this a lot. I evangelize it in my organization here at Channex, which is guys, let's try and design the car to go 200% faster, and what would that mean? Right? So it's really easy to try and iterate. We're going to make a 5% improvement, a 10% improvement, but how could you make a 200% improvement?

Speaker 2: 14:42

That means, oh, we needed a new chassis, right, we need a new, whatever, we need something completely different, and tooling, automation and AI can prove to be that difference. And so that's to be the real push that I give both the local people and program people to analyze hey, if we did want to create loads of marketing content that's unique and in very specific languages, okay, well, ai could probably help us do that. Okay, let's think about how we could do that. Automation could help us do that. That's the stuff that you really want to get into, so that you stop just looking at the one, two, three must haves but start looking at the four, five, six, nice to haves, but could prove a real, credible difference to your success.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Yeah, I agree there and that's the only way to approach it in the like, especially around those like how can you facilitate the local regions with the right technology, with the right frameworks there to actually personalize the program towards their specific needs? And maybe that's an interesting thing to touch upon, Like if you were a program manager and you would like start growing and building your program bottom up, like where would you start? How would you approach that to get the right type of input from the different regions?

Speaker 2: 15:51

Yes. So really simple. First, I pull the regional leaders from my key territories onto a call and say look, we're instating a proposition where I'm going to empower you to make changes to the program to help you move forward, and I'm giving them a framework. That doesn't mean you now get a completely different pricing structure, but it does mean that you can change this, this, this and this, and we might say you can change the product direction in terms of what we market and we can make these changes. Give them an area for them to make their nuanced changes in to help drive their market performance. People respond so well to that type of message because you're empowering them to make changes, but you're confining them to an area which still protects the level of scalability that you need. That's how you're going to thread the needle between a one size fits all and full customization, because full customization is never going to scale.

Speaker 2: 16:45

I heard the CEO of Airbnb the other day talk about this and I thought it was a really nice way of putting it. If you're building a car and someone goes oh, we're going to build a completely different type of tire, well, that means that it doesn't fit on the wheel, which means a new wheel has to be designed, which means a new chassis has to be designed, which means a new, and you get this knock on effect right, slows everything down. So you need some level of alignment. Hey, we need you to play within this box. But then you can define within the context of that box what we need to change.

Speaker 2: 17:15

And so I would be presenting to the local organizations hey, we want to give you flexibility around what our marketing message in your territory looks like. That's the flexibility. Now it's up to them to go and go away and do the due diligence around what's going to help their market. What's really clever allows you to A-B test. Suddenly, if the France message is working so much better than the German message, why Right? Hey, what if we now translate the France message into German? Oh, look, it's started to go better. That's the ability to be able to put some level of nuance in to allow people and empower people to be successful.

Speaker 1: 17:51

Yeah, that context piece is crucial because there's also one risk that I see when you start collaborating like that with the local region and asking for their input is that also they might expect, once they've given their input, that you are actually going to implement that. And if you don't clearly communicate what you are implementing and what not and why, then that can also lead to friction and a bit of annoyance. So that's super important. I'm fully on board with the piece that the bottom up strategy of building your program is very, very strong, but you also need to make sure that you cover the risk of that. You actually communicate very properly to the different regions what you're actually going to put into the program. You can just give the right examples that we just gave, like we need skill, we need to have a certain uniformity within the program, et cetera. So that's why we're doing this and not doing that. But I think that piece is crucial to do this in a good way within your organization and make sure that everyone supports the program as well, 100 percent.

Speaker 2: 18:47

There's a difference between fact finding and implementation right, and I think going through that fact finding journey is really critical. I'm a huge believer that the to do list is literally the only thing you need to go and be wildly successful. But if you haven't gone and gone on fact finding mission with all your local regions, put it into a priority or that you can then work down, sharing the context, to say we are doing one, two and three, we're looking at four, five, six, but it's not going to be until next year, and seven, eight, nine, we're never touching, just to let you know. Then people go cool, we get it. Fine. Now I understand why we did all this exercise.

Speaker 2: 19:22

I agree with your prioritizations give people the opportunity to feedback and should four and three, swap brown as an example, and share the context on why you've made those decisions. But if you do that cyclically, few things will happen. First, you will build a more nuanced program that's got local buy-in, which should be more successful because they're in the weeds, they're the feet on the street that can give you the feedback. Second, you get an empowered team right. They feel that they are a part of the process. They are more committed to run through walls for you and really make it successful. And the third bit you've now got that dialogue flow to and to and fro between your central organization and your local teams, meaning that if stuff does change, you're a more agile business unit, allowing you to be more consistently successful.

Speaker 1: 20:08

The feedback loop becomes much shorter, and I think that's where it's so interesting, because every like all customs we work with are huge multinationals and it's so difficult to keep that continuous feedback loop. And I think, indeed, by building it up like this, getting continuous feedback on it, but especially when you're launching new programs or when you're like going to revamp a certain program, make sure you start with that bottom up model but then also have a very clear vision on how are you then going to scale your partner program top down. And I think that's maybe another piece that's interesting to dive into, like what are the best practices there? If you want to scale it top down, what you need to look at.

Speaker 2: 20:43

Well, I think maybe I'm going to flip the question back to you, because I know you've got a real vision on how products should be created. We get customer feedback. How do those two pieces interlock for you that you? You're getting feedback from people on the street, but you also have a vision in terms of how things should be executed.

Speaker 1: 21:00

Yeah, I think I need to. How I look at those things and is indeed with a lot of similarities actually in how you build a product as well and how you build a program. What you want is that continuous feedback loop, so constantly getting input from all the local regions and or, in the products case, the local, the customers. You want to get the continuous feedback loop to really get all the input you need so you can build the ultimate program. But when you start building, that's when you also need to make the hard choices where you say, okay, we have, let's say, your program manager. Actually the local regions are your customers. That's that's how you should look at it, and we have maybe 30 or 40 local regions. They all have their specific needs and requirements.

Speaker 1: 21:41

But it's my job as a global program manager to now figure out where is the overlap, where is the biggest need at the moment and what are we going to build first and in what order. So then you make those decisions top down, but then you make sure you scale it with the right technology and with the right communication around it where the programs, where you have a uniform way of launching your program, but then also at the at the same time, when it's growing and when it's scaling, the regions can actually customize it to their own needs. So, for example, with their own distributors, they can do certain customization on their own market nuances etc. But you set out the big strategy with with the program.

Speaker 2: 22:19

I love that and I think one of the things that you know I am forever banging into my teams and I think it's really relevant here is guys, don't try and solve the problem. Highlight the problem right. It's not our job as local reps in this example to build the program, but what I need to do is highlight the problem with enough context that they can solve it right. So the example that we've used a few times Thomas Ford built the first car and his famous quote is if I asked people what they needed, they would have told me a faster horse. Instead, you ask what the problem they have is. Oh, it's transport. Cool, then I'll solve that problem. But I'm going to solve it as the product genius and solve that problem. You are the program genius. So what they need is enough context so that they can build a program that solves the problem you have.

Speaker 2: 23:08

It's not the responsibility of the local regions to start trying to build programs. That's not your area of specialization. You are people who communicate with partners constantly, who obsess around the number, obsess about the marketing plan. I can then share that back to my program. People to go cool. These are the problems I'm facing. Here's enough context for you then to build to the next car. That's the goal.

Speaker 1: 23:32

I actually think that analogy is really good, because the regions are always very quarterly or maybe fiscal year focused, max Well, actually the global program managers and the global teams are very long term focused, and I think that's indeed where the two worlds come together. You want the feedback from everyone who's in the trenches day by day. We will actually know where are we struggling, where are we accelerating, etc. But then you also want a long term vision of where it needs to go for the upcoming three to five years. 100% agree, awesome. Yeah, I think we shared a lot of things around our vision on program on building and scaling parking programs. If one of our listeners wants to have a further chat about it, please hit me or Alex up in the DM on LinkedIn. We always love to get your feedback. Thanks again for sharing today, alex, and to our listeners See you next week.