Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Luca Marinelli - Key Lessons for Simplifying and Scaling the Channel
This week on Partnerships Unraveled, we welcome Luca Marinelli, a seasoned leader with over 30 years of experience across tech giants like Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, and Check Point. Currently the COO of blinkoo, Luca joins us to share invaluable lessons from his career spanning vendors, distribution, and the SMB and enterprise channels.
Luca reveals the unique insights he gained from working on both sides of the channel, highlighting the critical role of distribution in understanding the entire value chain and crafting effective go-to-market strategies. We also explore the nuances of building scalable SMB programs versus driving high-value, complex enterprise solutions.
From enabling partners with simplified automation tools to tailoring strategies for specific verticals, Luca’s approach emphasizes aligning with partner needs to deliver impactful outcomes. He also sheds light on the future of the channel, touching on opportunities in cybersecurity, IT optimization, and the evolving hybrid cloud landscape.
Whether you're navigating SMB complexities or scaling enterprise partnerships, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways to elevate your channel strategy. Tune in for a masterclass in partnership excellence!
Connect with Luca: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luca-marinelli-3911b22/
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest Luca. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm good, thank you. What about you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing extremely well. I'm looking forward to today's conversation. I think it's going to be a really good one.
Speaker 2:Likewise Absolutely Awesome. Maybe for the uninitiated it'd be great. Oracle, microsoft, cisco, citrix, checkpoint, software Technologies, exclusive Networks, aludo I mean all companies in IT. Today I am the chief operating officer of Blinkoo, which is a small company providing end-user generated videos for travel sellers. So we do enable and inspire sellers through our videos, generated by a very strong community of creators around the world, to define the next destination for travel. This is the new edge, if you like, the new frontier Now 70%, 77% actually, of travelers they take inspiration from short videos and that's exactly our sweet spot. So we are partnering with very interesting companies in the travel industry and we are really very positive about our potential opportunity out there.
Speaker 1:Amazing. You've got quite the hit list of companies that you've worked for all of those lovely huge blue chip companies Cisco, microsoft, citrix. I think one of the key bits I always find fascinating about speaking to leaders within those organizations is I think some of those organizations are amazing hotbeds for sort of key leadership principles how to hire well, how to sort of train your team, how to manage performance. What's some of the sort of key leadership lessons that you've taken from from those roles?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, this is a very big question, but let me try to be effective. So I would say first of all what I've always been uh, I think a good approach, appreciated and useful was to learn and understand before to decide what to do and how to go forward. So learn the company strategy, learn the go-to-market model, learn the partner's pain points and opportunities, the processes, the tools that the company was using and what type of evolution was needed along these and other kind of directions. The other thing was once this was kind of clear, very interesting and important to me was defining and socialize the desire and state, so where to go next and the path to follow to get there, which is, you know, you can get to the same type of, let's say, objectives with different paths. It was also to me always important to highlight, you know, not only the final destination but also the steps that we had to do to get there.
Speaker 2:And I would say, as a third, using the experience that I've matured in other companies, but not copy-paste Every company is very different. There are different cultures, different, let's say, experiences on the table. So it's important, in my opinion, not to have really a bespoke approach, making sure that you adapt what you've learned to the new environment, and you sure that you know. You adapt what you've learned to the new environment and you use that as an experience, but then you adjust, moving forward for what this company is requiring at the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one of those nuances that are often missed is that sort of unique differentiator between companies. I often especially the one that I see very often is some senior person within Citrix or Cisco, one of these huge blue chip companies, and suddenly they go to a much smaller company right where maybe there's a much higher burden of sort of IC responsibilities and that transition can be really really tough for certain people because they come in with the expectation that all that operational excellence and maturity is just everywhere, which very oftentimes I know when I was at Zoom we experienced this a lot you suddenly are this huge, growing company and you attract all this world class talent and some of that talent really struggles to transition to the differences in culture more junior teams, younger teams working in different manners and the best leaders are really able to take a step backwards, understand what's required and sort of apply it in that new context.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct. That's exactly what I've done and I've seen that. You know this helps you in really understanding, learning a lot, but also adjusting your action and activities to what is really needed.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things that I always really enjoy about the channel is typically, within the channel, we have a vendor partner, a disty partner, a reseller partner or an end user. That'd be one model, and all of those different elements have different priorities and they have different understandings and different cultures and business priorities. You spent time in the distribution landscape at Exclusive. I'm really keen to understand what lessons did you take away that you've since applied on the vendor side of the channel?
Speaker 2:So that experience was great. I really experienced to be, let me say, on the other side of the desk. Usually when you are in a vendor position, you believe you know things, but unless you do it you really don't know it. So first, I've learned how the value chain works, starting from a vendor perspective, moving to a kind of two-tier channel, so distributors and partners. The other point, very important, is what is triggering distributors and partners' interest really in details, Because sometimes as vendors, we do believe we know, but sometimes we don't, and you know.
Speaker 2:Being in those shoes helped me really understanding what are the important elements and also how these companies make money. Where are the elements that you need to consider in order to be profitable, to be successful, and also how do you expand your kind of market share and market presence, which sometimes is a given, is a nice word that people are telling, but they don't really understand in details what it means. Last but not least, this gave me a great opportunity back in a vendor position to really, let's say, approach distributor, understanding their role, understanding their values, which sometimes is honestly undervalued, and really trying to fit our model and go-to-market as vendor to the distribution needs and use the distributors for the real value they can really provide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. I think I spent seven years in distribution, or six years in distribution, and then I ran Zoom's distribution strategy for EMEA and I've always said that distribution is the place that you learn the most about the channel right, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:When you're in the vendor world you are drinking the Kool-Aid, you understand what you care about. But because DISD sits between multiple vendors and thousands, typically a partners, you suddenly get such great context about what the individuals care about and I I always sort of suggest to people if you are starting out your career, I think this D is an amazing place, one to accelerate Um cause I think there's lots of opportunity for growth and distribution. But the context and the understanding of the channel I've had so many executives on this podcast who all started within distribution, so I have this sort of real love and care that I think distribution is sort of a landing ground for people to really get it.
Speaker 2:It is. It's the real life. You run a real company. You understand, you know also implication that when you are in a vendor position you don't see because it's not part of your value chain, while when you run a real company you have all this maybe not sometimes nice, but important elements of the. You know the regulation, the environment, the VAT, the taxes and so on and so forth. So it was a very good management experience yeah, and that is.
Speaker 1:That is something that really, uh is interesting, because you are a cfo and a cro all wrapped into one right when you're when you're in distribution world. I think no one in a 99.9 percent of people in in vanderland have no idea about the profit of the product and don't care particularly. It's just we're hitting revenue right. But sometimes, once you're in disty world, you really do care about margin. That's how you're, that's how you're making bread right. So I think that's the bit that um is often misunderstood about uh, distribution sales people is is they're playing a can be playing quite a complicated game, um, from your time at checkpointpoint. I think the SMB space is really really interesting because it typically requires low touch or even no touch programs to sort of help drive scale. That's complicated. How did you manage to overcome some of those complexities?
Speaker 2:So at Checkpoint I had two responsibilities One was for the whole partnerships across EMEA and the other one was to set up exactly the SMB market, let's say go-to-market model. So first, I would say there are some crucial elements. One is distribution, as we just said. So I think my opinion is you need to enable them in a proper way. Opinion is you need to enable them in a proper way. The opportunity that you present should be also making money maker for them as well, so they need to actively drive your solution as vendor. You cannot manage long tail in a cost effective way, so they need to be completely equipped to do the job on your behalf right on that specific channel. The other point, very important, is the customer. So customers in SMB, they have, let's say, limited to non-understanding of IT and skills, it skills. So it's therefore important to equip those partners with relevant and scalable solutions and platforms that are easy to propose, easy to sell and easy to drive to the SMBs customer, which ultimately are focusing on their core business, not really on IT, on their core business, not really on IT.
Speaker 2:The other element which to me is very important is the value proposition, which should not only be made by product on-premises. But managed service is a crucial element. Here Again, smb customers have no or limited IT understanding and often they prefer to pay to get a service rather than having to buy a product, managing their premises, having skills to run the product. This is making them much more agile from a cost and operational perspective and is avoiding them to, you know, buy complex infrastructure, staffing their people with skills and knowledge. So the managed services I think it's key in that market and this was something that was pretty strong at Checkpoint. We had a very good offering along that line which helped us to scale rapidly and to expand our footprint into that market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're touching on a point which I think all direct salespeople get, which is to sort of meet the customer where they need, right. And so in the SMB space, as you say, managed services rather than product is really important. I think one of the things that is often misunderstood is then we forget to meet the partner where they need, and so we start. You know, the one we always talk about here at Chanix is it's great that you're providing marketing assets, but most SMB partners don't have a marketing headcount to even use those assets. And so you touched on something in there which was tooling right how do we provide the tools to make sales, marketing, demand generation easy? Because, frankly, if it's not automated, don't worry, hang on. Let me just recut that, hang on, I can just put a note together.
Speaker 2:Mark clip. Let me put on mute.
Speaker 1:No worries Happens. So, luki, you touched on something there that I think is really interesting. Right, we understand from a direct perspective. We want to meet the customer where the customer needs us, and so most SMB end users need a managed service as opposed to a product. I think the thing that's often misunderstood in the channel is the same is true of the SMB partner. They don't need assets, they need tooling right To make utilization of assets easier, to make sales easy, to make marketing easy, and that's something that I think a lot of vendors misunderstand and they start focusing on how do we build a promo, how do we build a piece of marketing asset that's really easy to use? Well, often the answer is it's not easy to use if it's not automated. I'd love to understand what you learned about crafting smb specific channel programs. That resonated with some of those smaller partners absolutely so.
Speaker 2:First, I would say uh, you said it, you need to be simple. This is something that needs to. The program needs to enable immediately your channel distributors and partners how to make money in a very simple and automated way, which was one of the big strengths that, for example, checkpoint had. The other point is you need to be cost effective. So solution needs to be rightly price pointed not too cheap because that gives a kind of low value perception, but not too cheap because that gives a kind of low value perception, but not too expensive. Again, several times smb customers they have basic needs. Uh, they will not pay for a premium, right? So you need to kind of position the product in a proper way. The other element in my opinion, solution need to be robust. Uh, not so feature-rich like an enterprise solution, but robust enough to allow scalability and customer growth because those companies are aimed to grow, will to grow and providing them a kind of long-term perspective and adaptability in case of needs that are increasing.
Speaker 2:The other element which to me was very important was this automation of tools. We had a pretty interesting portal where, in really few clicks, partners could do almost the whole job right Sourcing for collaterals, checking about their sales results, looking after services and the opportunity to expand their value proposition. This is key for two reasons One, because a human being cannot manage well what you can automate, and two, because, back to my first point, you need to be simple. They need to be able to understand in a simple way and manage in a simple way the kind of engagement that you want to build with them. So this was key and sometimes you're right. Sometimes this is missed, or at least let me say this way, it is probably thought in a kind of traditional way rather than in a new fashion, and this is limiting, of course, the effectiveness of those programs.
Speaker 1:Maybe then pivoting from one end of the spectrum all the way to the other. You also worked in Citrix's channel, which is, I think, about as low volume, high value as maybe a channel is possible to get. Talk to me about the strategies you use to implement that sort of high value model.
Speaker 2:Okay, so exactly, this is a completely different game, completely. So partners need to be able to plug your solutions within fairly, not to say highly complex, existing articulated IT environments and aligning very, very much to the customer needs. So in this case, partners must have the right level of skills and market reach. They need to have commitment to work with you, strong commitment. It takes two to tango. So if you may provide great solutions, but if the panel is not committed, it doesn't work right. The other point is, as I said, they need to be able to integrate your solution within an existing environment. What it means? It means that they need to know not only your stuff. They need to be real system integrators because they need to understand the complexity of the existing solution and making sure that which is leading to me to the next point making sure also they understand the customer business and processes to be able to explicit the value of your solution within the customer specific business. What it means? It means that you cannot talk to a bank the same way you talk to an airport. They both have to manage people and customers, but in a different way, and this is where, in my opinion, the partner value is going to be more explicit, understanding well what's the customer business in order to adapt some solution that, honestly, can be valid for different verticals and different environment to their specific business, in order to explicit the value certain. Certainly, another element is is about services. You need to provide the right level of services to those type of customers to implement solution and help them getting the related benefit, as well as evolve in the future. So those partners need to be also having robust service practices. That is, by the way, the value they can provide to customers, using the technologies as a kind of entry point but then really exploiting their value in terms of services that are helping customers to adopt and take the benefit from the technologies.
Speaker 2:From a vendor perspective, what I've done was, with my team, identify the right go-to partners. There are a lot of partners, especially in EMEA, in several countries, and all of them has a value. The important is, to me, making sure that you understand where the partner fits in the market and what's the value they can give you, which is different vis-a-vis the type of partner you face. Manage partner properly with people and tools and systems, because you need to have in that space, in my opinion, a face-to-face approach. They need to have people. They need to be able to sit down with their counterparts, driving join customer approach, join account mapping, creating demand together with us and, which is another point, having a compelling program to stimulate partners in working together. Again, partners are not charities. They need to make money right. So, at the end of the day, it's important that the way you regulate the partnership allows them to make money, to simply understand how to make money and to basically using these tools and driving the right level of investment in order for them to be profitable.
Speaker 1:No, I think you've touched there on one of the things that I think we understand intrinsically is that that segmentization or verticalization that partners are able to provide for sort of complicated products is really important. Right, healthcare doesn't talk like central government, and so, however, when you take a product that has lots of use cases, that hyper specificity that a partner can do, that really is what you want to work with them on, because, as good as an AE can be, if you've got a partner that spends all day talking to health care, that's what they do.
Speaker 1:Right, they are able to take your marketing message. They are able to take your sales message and for those really high value ticket items they will put lots of work in to do all of that customization. Really, on the opposite end of the spectrum to the smb who need all that automation, high customization is the value of the partner and that's how you know the likes of citrix are able to build these almost unique product sets or product go-to-markets or implementation models based on that partner information I tell you I was used to run with my team the whole usual example which is a system integrator provides the water, let's say the water service to a company right.
Speaker 2:To make an example, we do the best cap in the world. We need to make sure that every bottle in that water service is our cap right. But the business is much broader than that. So the partner provides you know the vending machine, the person that changes the bottles and, yes, we can enter those big opportunities and environment. We need to be able to allow partners to understand what's the value in this example of the cap on the bottle of water, because they can provide the whole solution, including our technology and not being alone in the market. You need to really be customizing your approach because otherwise you know they have other opportunities and other options 100%.
Speaker 1:I think the thing that I've always found particularly interesting, and why distribution actually is such a good landing ground for channel understanding, is vendors very often think, hey, we're the center of this whole project and we're the most important element. But to continue your analogy, hey, if you're just a cap for the water and there's this whole infrastructure that's going behind it, you're a small part, which is fine. You might be a really valuable small part. The whole thing falls over without you. But the partner really understands that full picture and I think that's why I'm so bullish on where channel's headed is, because if they've got that full understanding and they've got that relationship, then they can interchange vendors pretty easily. But they're trying to think the best thing for the customer, and the vendors that get that will understand how best to work through those partners effectively Awesome. One final one then for you, luca. Having worked in cybersecurity and cloud transformation, I'd love to get your view on where do you think the biggest opportunities for channel innovation look like in the next five years?
Speaker 2:Well, again, this is another million-dollar question. Well, certainly, cybersecurity is, and it will be, the main customer interest. I've seen it in my previous job. There were a lot of interest in what we were doing, but cybersecurity is the number one priority for everything that is happening in the world. So what we are assisting in the cyberspace requires, in my opinion, companies to keep current with security solutions to defend themselves from the attacks. I mean, this is on a daily basis. So, in my opportunity, this is and it will be a huge opportunity for channel partners.
Speaker 2:Productivity solutions, in my opinion, are also going to be a great opportunity. Companies, as far as I've seen, are always looking to improve the way they do business and enhance their people, jobs and cost structure. If you like, we can call this IT optimization rather than IT transformation. Therefore, I believe this will be an area of interest as well. Modern companies are adopting and will adopt productivity improvement systems to maximize their people way of working, which, again being technology, being cost control. So this is going to be, in my opinion, another big opportunity for partners. Cloud certainly was a great opportunity and probably still will be to a certain extent. However, what I've seen is that several companies are revisiting their strategy to have on-premises solution and or hybrid systems, and this can also open opportunity to aid customers in their journey. It's not going to be more an opportunity, but it's going to be a different opportunity vis-a-vis what it was. When, you know, cloud was a paramount word that everybody was pronouncing in every sentence, right? So those three, in my opinion, will be the opportunity that channel partners can capitalize on.
Speaker 1:Perfect, luca. I think that IT optimization I think that's really if I want to layer the last piece in there in terms of how AI is going to transform routes to market and businesses that sort of AI IT optimization where we're simplifying or automating those swivel chair processes. I think that's really where I see enterprise businesses especially being able to benefit from how IT is going to speed up and drive efficiencies right across business.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Again, this is, I think, fairly different vis-a-vis the IT transformation. I mean, yes, you can review the whole system, process, culture, right, but often small steps are to focus on efficiency, effectiveness of existing systems and processes, without a complete overhaul. I mean, you need to just really maintain and keep well what you're doing, optimizing, rather than thinking to review the whole world immediately, right, immediately, in a click, which is not going to happen.
Speaker 1:Correct and I think that's where I think that's the sort of unsung hero in terms of where AI is headed is those microagents being able to be embedded in existing systems, existing processes, just to minimize the amount of manual interaction required, and I think that's where businesses are going to really step up and step forward very, very fast. Yeah, awesome, luca, it's been such a pleasure having you on. Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you very much.