Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Dana Sell - The Power of Marketing in the Channel
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Dana Sell, VP of Channel and Mid-Market Sales at Technology Advice, to discuss why marketing is the missing link in channel partnerships.
-Why do vendors struggle to make customers visible in the channel?
-How can marketing be used to recruit and enable partners?
-Why smart partners make decisions based on long-term revenue, not just margins?
- The future of channel alliances and why strategic partnerships will drive success.
Dana shares insights from working directly with CIOs and IT leaders, explaining how vendors and partners can bridge the gap between product, marketing, and sales to create real customer value.
If you are a channel leader looking to drive real ROI from your partnerships, this is a must-watch.
Connect with Dana: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-sell-baa0535/
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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 at chanix and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest dana. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm well, thanks.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me yeah, really excited to have you on. Maybe, for the uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of a rundown of who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Of course, thank you, and yeah, so my name is Dana Sell, the Vice President of Channel and Mid-Market Sales at Technology Advice.
Speaker 1:For those who aren't aware, technology Advice is a global marketing organization where a lot of our legacy comes from us owning and operating 30 tech websites for 20 years and have amassed an audience of 100 million readers, and from that, of course, we've been able to build on top of that all the different services and ways that organizations both in the channel and outside the channel could leverage that to grow their businesses for the purposes of expansion, recruitment, sales acceleration, and so it's been a really exciting journey. I've been with the company for about a year and a half now and just have really kind of brought a lot of the core elements of what effective channel marketing and partnering looks like when it comes to product quality and reliability, ease of doing business, revenue, profit potential or ROI. Those are the things that I'm so proud of, what the team incorporates when we engage with our clients, and so it's exciting to you know, have the conversation with you about what this could mean for the whole channel.
Speaker 2:I know you mentioned in our prep call that customers often feel invisible in channel conversations. Lots of organizations still see customers as just leads or revenue streams. Why do you think that's the case and how can sort of vendors and partners pivot their motion to make them a more core part and visible and integral to channel strategy?
Speaker 1:I know, I think there's a lot of reasons, right, there's probably not just one or two. I think that you know, first, a lot of pressure is on these vendors to bring their solutions and products to market, of course, Right, and so you know there's a lot of pressure for them to move that into market. And, of course, when it reaches the channel now you're reaching an ecosystem that is so sales minded, so sales led, that they take that and they're saying all right, we just got to continue to get this further and further into market. And when you're trying to break down how large the end customer universe is, many times I think it's easier to look at the end users, as you know verticals or size of organizations, and it can often be a little bit harder to try to break down. You know what are the needs of these end users, what are these CIOs, when are they at in their digital transformation journey?
Speaker 2:And to try to break all that down can take time.
Speaker 1:It's intensive. So sometimes it's a little bit easier to just look at the market, so to speak, as just wide swaths of healthcare banking in that context, and so I think that's a big part of it. But I also think sometimes it's hard to navigate the conversations when on one side, you're talking about margins and profit potential and all the money you can make by selling this stuff, and then on the other side you have these CIOs that may not necessarily want to be seen as folks that are leads and that are paying on top of what they could maybe get direct, and so there's a delicate balance, I think, there of having those conversations. So sometimes whoever is talking about it veers away from that, and I think that can be a missed opportunity. I think it requires just a little bit more thought. But I think it can be a lot more meaningful. When you kind of connect all the dots the vendor, manufacturers, the resellers, solution providers and the customer all together in a conversation, you're probably going to solve some bigger problems faster.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think also the framing can be sort of wildly inaccurate, right, Because I think the whole not all really the design of the channel is that a channel partner is in a better position to understand their customer right At its core principle. And so for me, one of the things that vendors must work really hard to do is, one, make sure we bring the right partners on who can provide that value. And then the second is how do you have a systemic and joint approach into understanding the end user customer? And if sometimes that's delegated right, hey, we build a program full of enablement and research and data and support to help the partners understand the customers extremely effectively. And sometimes, like you say, it's hey, we're all going to get around the table and understand that we have our own perspective, our own nuances and our own priorities, but the most important thing is that we're building a collaboration that works for everyone involved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think too, like sometimes we use the word partnership in this industry and we're kind of thinking about it in one context, right, many times it insinuates the relationship that exists between, like, a vendor and a reseller, in however way that reseller defines themselves. But you know, as you talk to CIOs, ctos, anyone you know inside the organizations responsible for managing these technologies that are being consumed, they also want to be seen as a partner and they want to see you seen as a partner from all sides as well. And you know, if you facilitate that, all of a sudden you're not only selling these folks one thing, right, there's so much opportunity for growth, they start becoming, they trust you more and so maybe just looking at the, the customers you know as more of partners, as collaborative, inside of this experience, a selling experience it probably could benefit greatly 100.
Speaker 2:I think. I think that's a really good point about partnerships one of the I'm. I'm constantly fascinated by the fact that when I speak to senior channel executives, how often the really successful ones speak to partners and they really, you know, are speaking to. I had Rob Ray on the podcast. We released it a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really good episode. Rob's a great guy and one of the things that I just couldn't believe I think he said he'd met 3000 partners across the last like two years or something insane. But you can, and that's speaking to them, right, and and you sort of just understand the importance of how that helps drive strategy, because you're getting at the cold face feedback like, hey, this is working well, this is not working well, but it's a collaborative exercise. And the same is absolutely true of customers, right, which is either the feedback's being disseminated through the partners in which case hey, great, let's get the partners to feedback but also you're sitting down with the customers and understanding and that's when they spin from leads to a real partnership. That's iterating strategy, right.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, what happens when you have that relationship where you can bring your vendor in to the conversation with your client and you're not scared, right? Of course there's there's the power of having a really strong channel chief not a bad thing to have if you're a vendor exactly that.
Speaker 2:Um, one of the things that we're obviously huge fans of um in our respective roles is the power of marketing, um, something that's wildly underutilized, I think, in the channel. Um, I know you really believe that marketing is a critical tool in the recruitment and enablement of partners.
Speaker 1:Talk to me about the best practices that you think vendors should be using yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot too and I I wouldn't go as far as saying it was an epiphany, but I just I, a couple years ago I was just I kept noticing, I felt like, when it to channel marketing, when it came to the purposes of recruitment, it was very top-down, so to speak, and what I mean by that is saying it was a lot of the vendor coming down to the partner and saying this is our tech, it's great, it's faster, it's better, you make more money, our program is great and all the trappings of a great experience, and that's wonderful, it's important. But I felt like what was also missing from that and I saw it when I joined technology advice is the value of doing almost a bottoms-up approach too and saying this is our understanding of the core customer that we believe is best suited for whatever it is that we're bringing to market, and let's think about it in terms of how that could benefit you. If you're not working with us already, you know, totally understand if it's, you know you're working with one of our competitors or you just simply don't sell this offering right now, for whatever reason it is, let's have a conversation about why we believe you'd be better off bringing us to that client. And if it's a new client, let's go to do it together to that client. And if it's a new client, let's go to do it together. And if it's not, and it's just simply an existing client, but you're trying to find a different way to inspire them to think differently and grow, let's do it like that too.
Speaker 1:And I've sat in a lot of boardroom presentations over the years and I've been in a lot of moments where I'm thinking man, there's just one missing piece there.
Speaker 1:And if this is such a sales-oriented ecosystem, why are we forgetting to talk about that? And so, from a channel marketing standpoint, as you're thinking about how to recruit partners like as recently as this morning, I was texting with a solution provider CEO about something he's talking about well, does that vendor offer the enablement tools to help these partners understand how to have these conversations? If this thing sits outside of your standard offering, are they bringing forward that type of support to their partners? And if they aren't, do it. And if they are, talk about it, because that can be as important in making your partnering decisions as your tech. Is that much faster and that much more efficient. So I think there's a huge opportunity and think about it from the bottoms up approach to how this aligns to the benefit of the solution provider to ultimately go to market and either land net new deals or expand into their existing relationships dana, I had exactly the same epiphany.
Speaker 2:I I. It's a story that I talk about this on the podcast quite a lot, which is I've never spoken to an Apple salesperson but I've bought basically every single one of their products. And that's because, as you head down market, right from enterprise all the way down to the consumer, marketing represents a bigger and bigger profile in what sort of dominates that go-to-market. And so, yes, when we're talking about how we acquire Nestle as a customer, that's a sales mission, right, that is, people flying in to do meetings and to take them through propositions face-to-face, because you can pay a group of people on that one deal, because that one deal is going to represent a huge chunk of change. Now, as you head down market, and as you say is specifically when we head into the smb, how is marketing being used to recruit, enable and then generate demand, which is we often think of channel organizations as channel sales organizations?
Speaker 2:My hypothesis? I think we are going to see this play out as, as msps become the dominant player and as uh brands continue to see the value in the smb, marketing is going to become the sort of key pendulum swing and actually take the lead. Because when you're talking about dealing with a thousand partners and dealing with a hundred thousand customers. You aren't doing that with sales people, you're doing that with marketing fair. Yeah, so I'm I'm sort of extremely bullish on where I think marketing is going to head, and it's great to hear that you've uh landed on the same epiphany.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'm not going mad yeah, no, I don't think so I think you're on the right track uh, you've mentioned um starting your career working directly with cios and it directors, which I think puts you in a extremely unique position in the channel, because a lot of us channel heads have just been in the channel. We spent all day in the channel and sometimes you can't see the wood from the trees. Talk about how your sort of nascent career has helped influence your channel strategy.
Speaker 1:I mean I feel fortunate to. Yeah, I've spent some time, you know, engaging with the CIOs, vps of IT, those who are essentially the beneficiaries of all this great solutions and tech that goes into market. How they consume it, you know, obviously runs the gamut right, depending on a lot of variables, and it's amazing to talk to them, and especially those that are enthusiastic about the environments that they've built for their organizations and how they're keeping up to date and all the pressure that they have getting more with less, all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, that's kind of where it all started. And then I made a move and some folks are saying you got to check out this channel thing, right, this is a different entity because these are the CEOs and presidents of businesses that are actually the ones bringing this technology to market. I mean, the channel is vastly you know where these solutions get sourced and you know this notion of partnership really kind of started to reveal itself where you know these, you know CEOs, these presidents, they're not just looking for the best tech, right, they're looking for the best partners and when they find them, they clamp down on them and they expand and grow together. And you know, I started seeing it.
Speaker 1:But you know, really I didn't. You know, the bug didn't really bite me until I was in a position where I was actually able to introduce vendors to partners. You know, you learn the partners' businesses. You kind of learn where they sell what they sell, how they sell their DNA, their culture, their leadership. And then you meet the vendors and you meet the products they sell and what they're trying to do and you make those introductions and after I made a few of those, the light bulb went off and I was like this is where I want to be.
Speaker 1:I will probably in my career never sell technology, you know, to a CIO. That's just probably not the direction it goes. I'll be close to it but I won't do that. But I probably will be connecting vendors and MSPs and solution providers for the rest of my life, just because I love it so much and I think it's. You know it's not the same as closing a big deal, but it's really close. When you see a few years later that these people that you introduced are still working together, they're thriving, you feel a degree of onus on that and you're like, oh, when's the next one I can do? This is just too cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I look there's there. Nothing is quite like the rush of closing that big deal, but that dopamine hit is a one-time hit, right? I think the thing that I'm constantly in love with about the channel is that the networks that we build professionally maintain personally and come back around and your old boss becomes your new boss or they become a member in your team, and I just think it's just such an awesome ecosystem of people that we're building and I can see the enthusiasm on your face, which is awesome, because I think that's what all the key people in the channel really care about.
Speaker 1:And I think it's even getting better. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I just feel like what you're doing right now, what the industry is doing in regards to supporting each other and just creating more outlets to share this kind of stuff, to have these dialogues, for people to get exposure, I felt like for a while to me it seemed that the channel was so linear. It was like you're a vendor, you talk to partners, you're a partner, you talk to customers. You're a disney, you talk to vendors and sometimes partners.
Speaker 1:And it was like I think that those silos are starting to come down a little bit and I think the enablers which I would consider us probably you all, the platforms, the editorial, the news, the research, the consultants all of that is really playing a stronger role in the space. And it's not just you know, I'm only going to talk to you or engage with you because you might buy my thing. It's bigger than that now. It seems so, and I think it's a really exciting time to be in the space and if you engage your network, you keep people close, you're always looking out for everybody and you're finding more and more ways to collaborate. I think we're in a really cool point in time right now.
Speaker 2:No, you're 100% correct. I remember when we decided to pivot the podcast to get sort of executives and senior people within channel and people like yourself, that we were like who is going to come on? Like, really, and yeah, every time when I sit down, these people in the guest, why do you do the podcast? I go because there's not enough information out there for young, hungry people who want to build their channel career. And I just see everyone go cool, hungry people who want to build their channel career. And I just see everyone go cool, yeah, then let's do it right.
Speaker 2:And it's just that reciprocity that's coming back in which I just it just just fills me with so much excitement that the channel is becoming more than how do we stuff a distributor for the stock and then how do we sell that stock out? Right, because that's, that's not fun, agreed, awesome. Now one of the things that I know is a bugbear for both of us is mdf, which is free money to make greatness happen within the partners, and yet partners do not use it. What advice would you give to smaller partners to help them understand why, how, what they should be doing with their mdf?
Speaker 1:yeah, well, I mean, first it's to understand it right. You know, like, the notion of free money, yeah, of course, Like sounds great, Easy pitch. Not usually the case, right, there are strings attached and you kind of got to know those right. You got to do your homework and research. What are the requirements of whatever vendors making these dollars available? And you know, the thing is, I think, that for the smaller MSPs out there, if that's a direction you want to go, right, you want to lean into somebody else's dollars to promote, you know, jointly the business, find some vendors to start with that really want to help you. Right, Like, don't try to go at it by yourself, Because you know some organizations just aren't necessarily built to help the smaller MSP out there, but some really are and really care and they're not just saying here is a portal, you know some upload, some plan and maybe we'll flush out some cash to you.
Speaker 1:But they really come to you with ideas and you know, and I think it's fair for you to ask them too, like you know, am I, you know, based on our relationship, it's not just the size of my organization, two and a half million dollar MSP, but how much commitment can I make towards your business. If you help me grow, what other peers of mine? What are they doing? And the other thing I would say is try to find your culture, your comfort zone and what you like and what you value.
Speaker 1:I'm here in Raleigh, North Carolina. So many solution providers and MSPs here and it's awesome because when you talk to them, they all do it differently. Some lean into their MDF dollars to do small gatherings lunches, dinners, that kind of experience and it works for them. They're very social. But there's other ones that lean in harder when it comes to digital marketing and stuff like that. It just works towards how they prefer to go to market and their relationship with their vendors. So I just think it's more about understanding who you're partnered with and if that's part of their true DNA and they're making it easy for you to understand how to do it, and they want to work with you.
Speaker 1:Go with those guys and then, kind of grow into the more complicated ones, where it becomes more of the onus on you to do all the things. You'll probably need a handful of people to help you do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had Tina O'Dell, who runs partner marketing for Juniper on the podcast. She used to work for a partner and she talked me through her story around how she basically spent all her time combing through mdf programs and understanding how to play the game most effectively and then, as a result, grew the business like crazy. And what I really you know, people think are, you know, is it that valuable? And the short answer is there is money available to help you grow and sometimes it can be the difference between vendor x or vendor y because the mdf program is better. Right, the technology stack is similar, negligibly different, and actually the program difference is the thing that's swaying the sort of partner behavior. So call out to both partners and vendors to make sure that you're focused on how do we get mTF utilization and ROI extremely high?
Speaker 1:Think about, like the top, you know the top core tenants of like, when partners are looking at a vendor right Product quality, reliability usually the number one thing right, If the technology doesn't do what it says it's going to do, it's kind of a non-starter. So you kind of quickly got to get past that. But there's a lot of like technologies out there in most every segment. So, okay, you win a bunch of awards, that's awesome, right, Make a big deal about that. But the very next one ease of doing business.
Speaker 1:I don't think that that has to only do with if I'm going to purchase, you know, 1000 PCs, how quickly can you get it to me? I think it also has to do with how, the ease of relationship, and I think that if it's thought through in the right way with things like MDF, that, like you said, could be the tipping point. And then the third one being revenue and profit potential. I don't think that only applies to, like, the margins you can mark up the technologies. I think it also has to do with how much more of whatever it is I can sell because of the infrastructures you've built for me and MDF and and all the tools are in that, in that same conversation right there. So you know, from a partner standpoint, look for that stuff. And from a vendor standpoint, just continue to review it.
Speaker 2:One hundred percent, dana. I mean, I'm so aligned. I constantly sit down with the executives to tell them that the smart partners are making decisions based on how much money they're going to make today and how much money they're going to make in two years. And you can be worse today, but much better in two years, and they will choose you because they want to work. You know, the hardest thing for partners is customer acquisition. Right, it's the hardest thing to do, and so the brands that index in supporting either upsell, cross-sell or customer acquisition. Those are the ones that people go yeah, cool, table stakes is your product is great, but there's lots of great product. The real question in terms of your point three is how much money am I going to make with you right now and what's this partnership going to look like in two years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think it should be expected that this free money out there is just out of goodwill. It's an investment into your business 100%.
Speaker 2:I think that's the thing that partners maybe misunderstand so often. Right, is that's an investment. And so one of the old habits and lots of our listeners will start smiling now which will be like, hey, we're doing this distribution incentive and it's going to be great, and we're just flying everyone out to get pissed, and it's like those days are done, I'll be honest, or mostly done, um, and instead it's like no, but I would love to give you the same amount of money, but we want to see a 10 X return. But the real smart business people are going, yeah, but we want to see a 10x return as well. The partner should be going, yeah, yeah, that's exactly what we.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, why are we doing this? Right, and so finding those like-minded people who are really serious about going to market that's the thing that you know. I just love business and that's what's so awesome about the channel is getting those people together around a table, whether that be digitally or not, and going. Let's really build a go-to-market plan that makes us both win. Yeah, you've mentioned that some of the best projects you've worked on are alliance projects, and I know that to me, is one of the most interesting pieces because one it's complicated. But second, I think it's most valuable. It's most valuable for the customer and it's most valuable for the partner. Talk to me about what are the key benefits from your perspective in terms of alliances coming together.
Speaker 1:All right, it's my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing. Is there anything more channel than alliance partnerships going to market? I mean, that's it right there. I think that kind of goes to like the notion of like. The channel isn't so linear, it's horizontal too. And if you can find organizations who really are self-aware of what they do really well and also understand where they either maybe fall short, is a little harsh, but they just don't do that. If it's a cloud storage play and there's a cloud security play, that blends well with that, and then there's other ones where it's even three or four brands coming together, whatever that combination is, obviously that decision has to be made well ahead of before it reaches the channel in any way usually. So those decisions are made and these organizations figure out what their strengths are and they understand ultimately what they want the partners to do. And we do a ton of that. We do a ton of that here. Of course, the hyperscalers are very involved with that. The ISV community is very ton of that. We do a ton of that here. Of course, the hyperscalers are very involved with that. The ISV community is very involved with that.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of ways to interpret what alliance looks like, but at the end should really care, because it's great for us and you know and you should too. I think the one missing piece in a lot of these is understanding, ok, who is the customer that's going to benefit from this and how can the partner bring it to market the fastest without overcomplicating things. Of course, like the ideally, in the best scenarios, the partner is already carrying both or all of those lines, so they kind of have a familiarity. But in the moments where that doesn't happen or you know it just has to be additional training. I think the training is not just like hey, you know, one plus one equals three, but one plus one equals three for you. Let us show you how now that hospital network that you manage can be streamlined and you can go into that meeting saying hey, cio, you should pay attention to this. We're actually going to consolidate things for you. It's going to make it better for you in the long run. When all of that comes together, there's nothing better.
Speaker 2:Two-tier value proposition 100%. I hate when I see these alliance stories and it's a better Two tier value proposition 100%. I hate when I see these alliance stories and it's a better together story for the end customer and nothing mentioned for the partner, or vice versa, which doesn't make sense. Right, I think it's so strategically humble for a brand to go. Here's where we're really strong. And if you want to be wider than that, here's how we're really strong together. Oh, want to be wider than that? Here's how we're really strong together.
Speaker 2:Oh, and, by the way, here's how you sell it, deploy it, manage it and the platforms all plug in together and it all works. And here's your story to the end user. The end user is buying an outcome and very, very rarely is one vendor the outcome. Right, and so I just strategic humility, right, how do we partner together, both horizontally, right, which is your tech alliance, and then vertically, which is your partner alliance? And I think that's where yeah, I mean that's where this whole messy soup that the, the channel is, comes together, and I think that's when we do our best work from a marketing standpoint you know we are happy to tell that story right.
Speaker 1:But from an infrastructure and program standpoint and how compensation works and all the inner workings, the complexities of enabling alliance partnerships, that's something where those vendors got to figure that out well ahead how distribution is going to react to this and be compensated on. There's so many variables in there where it's like you can tell the greatest story, you can get these partners excited about it, you can even get them as far as bringing it up in meetings and maybe even getting as far as selling it. But if there's hiccups throughout that journey and even post sale, who's going to support where the management comes from? It's going to be short-lived. So the longer standing alliances are the ones that figure that out well ahead of time and then we are loving to tell that story to our audience.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So to me, that's really one of the critical functions, right? The channel chief is to make sure that when we are having a product conversation in terms, of hey, this is how our product is going to plug into a technical alliance, it's that at that point we start having the discussion Awesome. We need nine month runway to build the channel that goes along with that right, and that is getting distributors aligned, getting partners aligned, getting uh, marketing collateral built that contains all of the branding, getting the training elements built that contains all of the brands. All of that has to come together.
Speaker 2:But I really and I know you're exactly the same, dana I'm so bullish on the brands that get this right are going to see such outsized returns because, while they're competing against, other brands are going. We do loads of stuff well, and if this stuff doesn't go well, speak to other people. Well, we don't know them. We're playing the game of no, we do know them. Here's the introduction, here's the training, here's the marketing. We've got it all together because we're one solution yeah, outcomes, we're solving it.
Speaker 1:We're solving problems without you know outcomes delivery.
Speaker 2:That's the way to do it and on this podcast, we're all about alliances as well, so we always ask our current guests to recommend our next guest. Dana, who did you have in mind you?
Speaker 1:You know how much time you got. But you know those folks that come to mind, and you know one that came to mind was Jenny Kristofiak at Lenovo. And you know the reason why I picked not only you know Raleigh, you know shout out to North Carolina over here. You know big, big fan of the Lenovo organization. But a big part of that is you know the massive undertaking it takes to have such a wide portfolio that encompasses all things data center, pc device. It's just all expansive. How do you get the partners to all march in the directions that you know they need to go? And there's so many choices and so many options out there. So when you think about product quality, reliability, you think about ease of doing business, you think about revenue, profit potential. You know, I bet you Jenny has a lot of interesting things to say about what it takes to manage a channel like there. So I think that'd be one I would go after.
Speaker 2:Awesome, jenny, we're coming for you. Dana, that was awesome. Love talking all things marketing with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.