Channel marketers are no longer top of the funnel. And Janet Schijns is determined to change mindsets around that.
According to the CEO of JSG Group, channel marketers need to dive deeper into the sales funnel and master the art of social selling — a game-changer for partners looking to outshine their competition.
Tune in as THE go-to-market and profitable growth expert unravels:
An unmissable podcast episode if you’re looking to make a significant difference in channel revenue 🎧
_________________________
Learn more about Channext 👇
https://channext.com/
Watch on YouTube ►
https://www.youtube.com/@channext
#channelmarketing #channelpartners
Channel marketers are no longer top of the funnel. And Janet Schijns is determined to change mindsets around that.
According to the CEO of JSG Group, channel marketers need to dive deeper into the sales funnel and master the art of social selling — a game-changer for partners looking to outshine their competition.
Tune in as THE go-to-market and profitable growth expert unravels:
An unmissable podcast episode if you’re looking to make a significant difference in channel revenue 🎧
_________________________
Learn more about Channext 👇
https://channext.com/
Watch on YouTube ►
https://www.youtube.com/@channext
#channelmarketing #channelpartners
Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships and channel On a weekly basis. My name's Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channet and today I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, Janet. Janet, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm awesome. How are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, really good, really good For the uninitiated Janet. Who are you? Where have you been? Why should they be listening to you?
Speaker 1:So, first of all, janet shines, although it looks like speigisions when you see it spelled. So in the episode trailer you'll realize that I'm located in the United States and I am a go-to-market expert. So my firm, jsg, works with a variety of companies, both big and small, to help them to go to market, primarily through indirect channels.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome and we've obviously interacted because we've done a couple of webinars and I think me and you were sparring on how the channel has changed and is changing and needs to change to optimize. I'd love to get into where do you see the biggest opportunity for the channel marketing teams to make a significant difference in channel revenue in the next two years in this rapidly shifting world?
Speaker 1:So, look, I have statistics to prove this. Okay, so five years ago, the average customer and user, customer buying and I'm going to use technology, since that's the space we primarily function then buying B2B technology spent about 51% of their time with a salesperson. That time has declined, eroded. Last year it was 17% of their time was spent with a salesperson. This year it's all forecasted to be about 14%. So what happened? What happened is customers are on a self-discovery journey, and so when customers are on a self-discovery journey, who is prescribing that journey?
Speaker 1:It's marketing and, as channel marketers, that means that we have to understand the journey customer is taking, that goes through a partner, and be able to, as a channel marketer, put the not just awareness, which is where channel marketing started, but also evaluating options, looking at your features, benefits, value propositions, et cetera, and getting almost to the point of a closure before it goes over to sales, to close, negotiate, do options, and so in that world, the biggest change I think for channel marketers is getting out of the belief that you're at the top of the funnel. You're no longer top of funnel. We used to use that term. Top funnel leads. Right, you're no longer top of funnel, you're probably three quarters of the way through the funnel. And so you have to change your mindset to be around that. That that level right Of saying I am not about just driving awareness. Yes, I have to drive awareness, but I also have to drive selection, I have to drive solution understanding. I have to drive pretty far into the sale. So to me that's the big change.
Speaker 2:So often I see indirect businesses not learn from direct businesses and I think the later the days of sort of marketing being responsible for inbound. Top of funnel died ages ago and yet ages ago, right Ages ago, yeah, and we see salespeople reporting into marketing leaders, because actually they fully understand that marketing plays a critical role in direct go to market motion and yet we're still playing the same game that we've played in the 90s.
Speaker 1:We still in channel marketing. Right yeah, In channel marketing, where we go?
Speaker 2:no, no, we're just, we're right at the top right and it improves conversion.
Speaker 1:And that's why partners sorry to step on you as I get excited, and that's why partners are so frustrated with the marketing that they do get from their vendor right, because it's just not as direct as what their marketing team would given for direct selling. And so I think again. I think it's that disconnect between to your point, we haven't learned enough and many channel marketing organizations about where the customer is actually going in the customer journey and continuing to work at the brand awareness level versus deeper down to yeah, as we see that shift, I think one of the biggest changes that we've seen in the direct to market motion is the use of social and social not just for awareness but actually for continued nurture.
Speaker 2:I think personally and we sort of betting Channexed on this entire philosophy as well, so hopefully everyone else agrees but we sort of see social as the way, especially for smaller partners. You can get a really awesome automated, scalable version. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you think social and indirect together.
Speaker 1:Social selling is our most popular indirect marketing program that partners sign up for and I want to make sure I stress that here to listen to partners most For her popular program is social selling. We've done billions of dollars of funnel with a particularly smaller partners ready to have the marketing prowess and marketing Budgets of some of the bigger guys or gals. And the social selling program teaches them not just to social media as a broadcast tool again back to that awareness versus deeper in the funnel but to use it to make connections, to follow up on leads, to follow what their clients or prospects are doing, to engage in a way that gets to their home. They're safe. And what's fascinating about our social selling program is we have definitively proven that the folks that go through the social selling program and practice social selling daily Are achieving photo at three dot seven x, almost four x their peers who are not practicing social selling now. With that said, only about twelve percent or so of channel partner sellers are yet social selling experts working as fast as we can at JSG To get more folks through that program. On the course she must plug if you want to put your partner through the program we chat. But what's fascinating to me is that those folks are Just killing it social selling. We just published a podcast in a use case with a gentleman at the Montreal who Triple his funnel in sixty days and quadrupled his clothes, is in a hundred, and so what did he do different from anybody else? He just practice social sound, and so we truly believe the social media is the way forward. Now that doesn't mean angry tweets from your couch or exes from your couch About you know, your meal somewhere that you didn't like the door dash delivered on. It means actually being seen as an expert, and one of the things we really been working with folks on is Portraying as an expert on social media, on comment and engaging as an expert. This is moving those sales long, and so I can agree with you more social media is the move forward. Now I often have older, more experienced, I guess I should say, instead of older, more experienced marketers are Question it.
Speaker 1:Social media, that's just, you know, a broadcast tool, because they've never used it to engage with customer signal or use it to engage I'm fully, and so they haven't seen the results right. They went out and they said very draconian, late I'm, we're gonna make these posts every day and you all the sales people, repeat those posts on your on your LinkedIn and then, six months later, they were like Social not working for us will, of course it's not working for you. It's as if you told your sellers to go to the next networking event and run up to people and start screaming in their face about what your company Social media is no different than being in a networking event. You would do that. You warm people up first, right, then you talk about what you do, and so that's you know. We really teach Selling on social media versus broadcasted. So long winded answer, but I hope it helps.
Speaker 2:No hundred percent and I couldn't agree. More people buy from people and yet we get on social media and forget we are people, right? So we're gonna Stop talking like we actually care about people, stop having humor or showing any level of personality, which is gonna be a microphone for a brand, and that's not what works. What works is we can scale relationships far and wide. You spoken a lot about the SMB gold rush and how lots of major channels people at Microsoft and Cisco they're heading more down market. What advice to program leaders on how marketing really is that critical tool? Help scale a channel when you're moving down market and you need a much bigger channel route there to operate.
Speaker 1:Well, so first of all I want to start with that one tell discussion on. So too many vendors have fallen in love with the biggest part and I get why. Right, there's revenue there for the taking, it's fast, it's quick, it's a. I got some big deals. It's making your board happy because you signed up one of the big partners on. It's making your boss happy to set up with the big partners. But in reality most programs grow from the bottom up and the big players tend to draft behind interesting late what the smaller partners have done in a space or or anyone else because of smaller prayers, more nimble.
Speaker 1:When it comes to marketing, what happens many times is the vendors give all the MDF to the big partners and then the little partners they just hope maybe somebody in distribution I'll do something for them and they leave forward. But what are our data and our programs have shown is that by harnessing those small and partners, you kind of three advantages. One you have a first move or so when you launch a new program, launching new product, launching a solution. Those smaller partners are more likely to take the risk and go to market with a marketing campaign with you. The bigger partners are less likely, right because they've got established practices and it takes a lot for them to put that marketing play into play To. The partners are more likely to follow up on the lead at the smaller side because they are not overwhelmed by leads from 20 other vendors. They are very happy to get a lead and they will put more into it. In fact, the smaller vendors many times will double the reach out to read to a lead over A bigger partner because again, they're hungry for the business.
Speaker 1:And then, third, you know, when you lump together all your small partners and Add up their volume, they become one very large partner who expects less, who charges less, who takes less discount, who who really takes your cost of channel and Changes it. And so, as a marketer, you have to say to yourself what programs could I do to stimulate demand for those partners? So, for example, our social selling boot camp. We've had vendors who have brought a hundred Partners into one social selling virtual boot camp at a relatively low price, train them all, provided them with content for 90 days and seen massive growth from now. But you can't treat them like you treat a big partner and assume they're gonna have their own marketing teams and their own this and their own, that You've got to package something up and bring it to them as a community and have the community do that marketing practice.
Speaker 2:In the irony is right, because I think is is marketing philosophy 101. Would you rather have a run rate of business or close big deals? And the answer is well, you want to. Run rate of business is sustainable, you can grow it consistently time over time, and yet we get pulled to the big partners where we go. This would be great. We're gonna work with an X, y or a Z right and it, and if you're building a sustainable, strategic, long-term mission, it's no, no, I want. I want thousands of small deals consistently through Hundreds of partners consistently, because we just keep adding a little bit each month and that will continue to grow and continue to protect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love it. Yeah, that's such a great point.
Speaker 2:I'm asking you to regurgitate the fact that I heard you use the other day in terms of the ROI, spent Down market versus spending in that up market. What's the differences that you've seen that?
Speaker 1:So new data for 2024, even better than last year. So the ROI up market is somewhere between 17 to 21 X maxed out for most vendor programs. In down market we're seeing 33 to 41 X, so even bigger in 24, based on 23 results, because when we last spoke in 23 it was 22 results, right? So we just finished rolling up that year and so the results are big now. That's not to say that you're not gonna have a big partner that has 50 X ROI for a specific program and not to say you wouldn't have a smaller partner that has no ROI depending on execution Right, because the partner has to execute, but we are seeing a massive split between the smaller partner. I owe another two reasons for that. One, typically you spend less down market than you would spend up market, so it makes your hurt all it easier. But two, as I mentioned earlier on, their close rates are better. So down market the close rate is actually 30 some percent better than up market and that substantially changes.
Speaker 2:Here are yeah, focus beats talent right and, like you say, you can have the best. You can have the best partners in the world. But when they're dealing with hundreds or thousands of leads across a year, the focus is just not that right, and so I'd rather Not as hungry as the guy who only got five this month.
Speaker 1:He's got five this month. He's gonna follow up on those full of cows come home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that right, and I think you've got to be positioning now. What I find really fascinating about this whole discussion is really we're talking about the Operational complexity of building a long-scale channel, because it's how do we have the touchpoints? Typically, we want people and people doing training sessions, and maybe partner portals don't work as well as we would like them to. We're not getting the right levels of engagement, but we seem to be DVVating away from an operational challenge and instead we're just going oh, that's complicated, let's just keep chucking MDF, that maybe partners don't get this level of return, we're off very interesting, yeah, and I think you know if you kind of, as marketers sometimes we have to pull up a little bit.
Speaker 1:We fall in love with our own stories.
Speaker 1:Because we're great marketers, we told great stories, um, and I think one of the stories we told ourselves as we were getting a better bang for the buck up market.
Speaker 1:And I'm not here, you know, saying cut all your spend up market, that's not realistic either, right, but we do have to realize the larger partners many times have glory campaigns, so they're having you pay for their golfing outing and their president's club and they're this and they're this and you're they're not so much joining your program as you're joining their Program. And so I think it's it's for all of us to say let's negotiate that a bit. So if that big partner says, hey, I want 250,000 for my package or a million for my package or whatever it might be, let's negotiate, negotiate that down 10, 15, 20 percent, I'm not saying cut the funding, I'm saying find places to negotiate, take that money back to doing a community campaign. You'll do two things one, you will endear yourselves to the community of partners that are out there and two, you will see better ROI. It's win, win. Win because your ROI will also go up on the big partners, because you cut some of that fat out of your MDF spend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I sort of love that philosophy. One of the consistent things that I've seen when I speak to sort of marketing leaders is segmenting your partners on do they use marketing as a profit center or a revenue generator?
Speaker 1:And then and then you use it as a profit center.
Speaker 2:Yeah, drop it to the bottom line.
Speaker 1:Here's a great question for you to ask. I always ask this of the big partners and the big distributors because they're often tasked with managing the long tail and get tons of MDF that doesn't go down market for some of them. There are also some very good ones, like Ingram, that make sure they drop that to their partners. But what I always ask is are you outsourcing any marketing to third parties from this money? And if they say no, then I know that they're dropping it to the bottom line and I'll come back and say that is not our preference.
Speaker 1:We would like to see invoices from third parties for at least 50% of the money. And I'm not talking about a hotel receipt. I'm talking about lead generation campaigns, training campaigns, something that you're not doing yourself at your company. Now I've had people challenge me to say I have the best marketing team in the business. Okay, show me their results versus the third party who does it for a living. Now, all they do for a living like my team, right is social selling. We have a whole team. That's all they do is social selling. We have a whole team. All they do is intent based marketing.
Speaker 1:You can't argue with me that your person that's done it for seven minutes because you're dropping the money to the bottom line is going to do it as well as a third party who has a profession in this. And I'm not saying you have to take all of my MDF money and use it for third parties. I want to see a certain percentage of it and you're starting to see MDF program rules change and say you have to submit receipts because people did see, hey, I just gave a half a million to that partner and it just dropped to the bottom line and we were included in events and other things that they were doing anyway, and so that's a big concern.
Speaker 2:So one of the and you touched on Ingram there is particularly handling the situation well. Yes, I've spent a lot of time in distributors, working with distributors in previous roles, and typically the marketing department is the most profitable part of any distributor globally.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is.
Speaker 2:What are the areas in where you would be asking your distributors to box smart or what are you holding them accountable to outside of getting the receipts? Is there anything else that you feel like distribution should be doing to enable that long tail and really deliver value there?
Speaker 1:I do. I think that they should be using the business analytics that they have available, because they see everything that ships, if you're on the hardware side, or licensed if you're on the software side, or service right If you're on the services side. And so I think they need to use that business intelligence better to work with partners to say here's your accounts and what you would sell next, here's how you should sell it next, here's the program you should use to sell that. So if your customer already bought X, y and Z, they're most likely to buy L next, and the company that bought ADNF are most likely to buy M next. So don't market the same thing to them, right? They need to use that business intelligence.
Speaker 1:We're seeing a lot of success with large vendors using tools like PartnerTap, using tools like yours. Right To partner tap really helps in one area and your tools helping another. Partnertap helps in the account mapping so that you can say I'm going to go after these accounts with the partner and map back, and that's amazing. And then the distributors can make cohorts of those accounts right that have something in common. Your tool helping with all the automation for the distributors around the marketing, marketing spend, marketing campaigns I get that. They all have their own internal marketing teams and I applaud that right and I love that. They're profitable, because that's awesome, but not using the tools that are now available as platforms is, I think, a weakness for the majority of them.
Speaker 2:And do you have any views? I hear a lot of distributors talk about buying or building internal platforms and tools to service their partners rather than really using best in class third parties. And what's your view there? Do you really feel that you're coaching vendors away from you know, contributing to an ex distributors so that they can build a platform that potentially maybe doesn't.
Speaker 1:Listen, I think it's an and game. Right, there's not one platform on, even if you think about buying things in a marketplace right, there's not just an Amazon. There's an Azure, there's a right, there's, there's all these platforms. And so I think that there are some things that distributors has to build their own platform for. And I understand, and I tell the vendors the same thing they're building their platform.
Speaker 1:It's in your core competency in the physical world. You should be building in the digital world. If it is not in your core competency in the physical world, you should not be building it in the digital world and you should be using someone else's tool. A great example for that is CRN PR, right. So if you think about you know partner relationship management tools, why would you that's not in your core competency go and buy from a zift, right, who has a good tool, right, just don't, don't Sit there and try to recreate. And so I tell the same thing to distributors if it's something in your core like, if you're building software licensing platform where a partner can track moves, ads, upgrades, that that's well within your core business of what you as a distributor, you as a distributor, be hired to do is a job. Build that platform. But if you're trying to build a marketing automation platform, that is not in your day to day reason that people buy from you, so why would you do that? You should outsource it. So it's kind of an and answer, alex.
Speaker 2:It's a good answer. And look, yeah, we've been. We've obviously been interacting for a little while. I've been a huge fan of, I think, one of the some of the impact that you're having it JSG. I'd love to know and give you an opportunity to talk about Really, what are you doing that's so different? How are you helping a marketing programs major vendors really take that next step?
Speaker 1:I love that question. So the first thing we're doing is challenging everything. So many times when marketers plan, they plan from a position of hopefulness. Right, hey, we're gonna increase leech 30% this year, we're gonna drive new revenue, new partners of a vendor right hundred new partners. This year we take it back and in our business planning up and we call it new market action planning.
Speaker 1:With our vendor clients we say, okay, what we're gonna talk about first day day one in the two day program is Everything that would make you sale, will put you out of business, what would kill you, what would have your whole department eliminate, what would have all channel marketing eliminate. What would kill you. Don't talk about the growth. What's gonna kill you? And it changes the conversation, right, because we, we race to a crisis and we crawl to an opportunity and so by creating a crisis right now, we what you know how would we all be eliminated? What would have to happen? Oh, my gosh. Right, you start to see the. The other side of that equation is what would make you highly successful as opposed to incrementally successful. So that's the first thing we do on our market action planning and then we go through what is the current channel marketing. What is your mdf program? What's your partner program? How do we change this to adapt to a world that's being driven on influence, most of partners in a sale Marketplaces, a socially connected community, and how do we then take the investment you have today and rejigger that investment to be right for the channel of future, including changing some programs?
Speaker 1:Then, as we change the lens down to partners, we work with some of our great partners like partner optimizer to create cohorts of the partners that are gonna get marketing treatments because they have a lot of information on the partners and what the cell and what they're actually good at versus what the partner tells you they're good at. And we create these cohorts or communities of partners and put them through plays. And this is the key in the channel. For too long channel marketing has been about up here, up here, right, awareness, the program. Now you gotta do plays like I've got five hundred partners are in the managed security service play. I've got seven hundred partners that are in the manage infrastructure play. I've got three hundred partners that are in the pure play, hardware. I've got Right, and these are the plays, this, this is the play. And then the final thing that we work with and this is probably the hardest, alex.
Speaker 1:And so you know, if you're a channel marketer like just lean in deep breath, cleansing breath is stop marketing your company. You're supposed to be marketing the partner. You're in channel marketing. So if your ABC co and your channel marketing is 75% ABC co, you failed. Your channel marketing should be 75% plus partner with a little sprinkle of your Vendor information, because the partner is selling that they are brand first. They're selling now and in increasingly everything is a service world. They are managed service first. Many times on the customer doesn't even know what is part of their bundle. They don't know who they have for end point security. They don't know who's stealing and they have. They don't know. But they don't know and they don't need to know. What they know is that Bob's pretty good partner is who they have a contract with that makes sure all their IT works. And so when you try to advertise you, all you do is have the partner go yeah, I'm good and not use your marketing that this is.
Speaker 2:I yeah, I want to stand up and applaud. This is the thing that winds me up so much, because brands talk about hey, look at our features and benefits. I'm sat there going. We know not to sell like this. Why are we marketing like this? Instead, we're talking about the problems that we solve, the security that we deliver, how we can make glory from nothing, and then the partner gets a wrap their logo and their messaging around that, and then, yes, it's powered by Correct, correct.
Speaker 1:And I will tell you, if you want to see your partner is just lean in and start working with you, because that's an entire marketing campaign that never mentions your company in the area that you're in and that mentions instead where the partners Strengths are and you will have partners flocking to you and, by the way, they will sell your service. They understand how it works right. They understand that if you create an entire white peeper and campaign and all kinds of things for I'm just gonna use managed security and on a lot of things today, for managed security and your snock or Nsoc, whichever way you want to say network and security operations and I like snock because it snows better.
Speaker 1:That's how it's funnier yeah um, but you know, if you do a series of educational content on that and the partners value add in that, the partner understands loyalty and they will drag your solution into that and do more and more with you. And I think as channel marketers kind of make final closing thought on that is we like to make things hard, harder than they need to be, and so we keep trying to recreate the wheel when like, really and honestly, it's a clean Right that that we need to get built. And so you know, kind of challenge everything, burn the boats as it's, as the saying is known, and not and Just take a new approach.
Speaker 2:Janet, that's been awesome. It's great to see your unique vision on. The world is clear why JST is having such an impact In the market and we are partnerships and channels through on through and this podcast. So we wouldn't be a partnerships program unless we ask for referrals. We like to ask our guests to recommend the next guest that we should have on. Who did you have in mind?
Speaker 1:I think Chris Jones who, by the way, just run channel and influencer for a year last week and is just, I think, the best channel sales leader out there Is the right guy to get on next. And so where's Chris work today? Chris is at AT&T and he leads their channel.
Speaker 2:I'm excellent, chris. We're coming for you, janet, it's been a real pleasure. And yeah to all our listeners. I hope you found this as valuable as I did and we will see you next week.
Speaker 1:Thanks, so much.