Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Larissa Crandall- How to Build a High-Impact Partner Ecosystem
Building a partner ecosystem from the ground up isn’t for the faint of heart—it takes vision, strategy, and a deep commitment to collaboration. In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Larissa Crandall, Global VP of Channel & Alliances at New Relic, to explore how she’s scaling a global partner strategy with precision and impact.
Larissa shares the foundational steps she took to establish a thriving channel program, why she prioritizes quality over quantity when selecting partners, and how she ensures alignment across sales, finance, and the C-suite. We also dive into the importance of an outside-in approach—how listening to partners and customers shapes a winning strategy—and why CFO buy-in is critical for long-term channel success.
From structuring co-sell motions to fostering executive engagement, this conversation is packed with actionable insights for anyone looking to build (or rebuild) a high-performing partner program. Plus, Larissa shares her passion for mentorship and why investing in the next generation of channel leaders is key to sustaining industry growth.
If you're serious about building a channel strategy that scales, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.
Connect with Larissa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larissacrandall/
_________________________
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 is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, larissa. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Good, how are you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm extremely excited for this one. We had an excellent preparation call. We're diving into some of my favorite topics. Maybe, for the uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of a rundown of who you are and where you work.
Speaker 2:Sure Global, vice President of Channel Alliances at New Relic, excited to do this with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think New Relic's an interesting business in terms of where you sort of are in that maturity cycle. You are building out the partner ecosystem maybe partially from the ground up. I'd love to understand what the sort of first priorities and first steps you took to sort of lay out that framework.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, happy to get started, so unpacking everything, just as you can imagine when you first start.
Speaker 2:It's not easy. I think one of the first things that I always do is spend time, obviously, with the internal stakeholders at the company, and I mean everything from intersecting between our marketing organization to understand who we're going after on the build side, work with our product team, our CTO organization, our executives. What's the goal of the company, what are the priorities. So a lot of first conversations then pivot very quickly over to the partners. It's extremely important. Anytime that we're building strategy, I want to always think from the outside in and really spend some time with partners and understand what are their goals. How do they think of New Relic? What can we be working on better to support them? So, first and foremost, it starts out with a lot of conversations and think of me as the intersect between all of these organizations, where it's on the eyes and ears for all of that and then communicating back to the rest of the org no-transcript.
Speaker 1:That customer feedback, that partner feedback and then pretending like you've had really great ideas, when actually you're just translating feedback into action, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:It's so cogent and so important, especially when you're building out that global infrastructure and you know how are Japanese customers and partners thinking about your program, that's really hard to sort of predict and manage from your perspective. I'd love to understand what are some of the maybe processes or cultural standards that you set to ensure that you garner that feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you have to think from, obviously, as you just said, is an outside-in perspective and really building out whether it be your partner strategy, your partner program, with an eye on a global perspective all the way down to a regional perspective. There are different ways that other geos go to business, go to market. There are different distribution paths, there are different boutique bars and service partners and all of it. It's very different in all of the geos, so you have to pay attention to that. You can build a framework and a strategy to align with what the company is trying to achieve, to align with the go-to-market and what's going on out in the market and economics. But it's really important to have a voice for each.
Speaker 2:I spent a lot of time with our geo leaders when I first start. I started my career as a sales leader and an inside seller out of our, so my DNA is just inherent in I think that way and I think it's really important to pay attention to that when you're building out strategy and making sure that you are engaging and asking some of the tough questions what are we doing well and what are we not doing well? What would you like more of us to do? And making sure that you and hearing that, but also going back with how you've solved their issue or given them more support or incorporated their feedback in your strategy or program.
Speaker 1:Extremely important to stay connected that's uh, that's awesome to hear, um, maybe now even a philosophical one for you. That, I think, also applies to channel strategy and what you're trying to do at New Relic. But I often find channel leaders will either be a quantity of partner plan or a quality of partner plan. I know you've heavily indexed in terms of choosing very selectively the right partners. Why did you land on that side of the coin?
Speaker 2:partners. Why did you land on that side of the coin? Because you can't be all things to everyone.
Speaker 2:When you first are building out a partner program, we have a very strategic approach and being prescriptive, and I think whatever your strategy is, it has to align with the partner strategy and paying attention to them and what their goals are and know when to pivot, when it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2:You may think that there are certain types of partners or certain partners that you want to engage with that would be great to go to market with, but then you have a sit down and you have a strategic conversation. Have a sit down and you do. You have a strategic conversation, executive conversation, you meet with their engineering team and then you figure out very quickly timing isn't right and it's okay to pivot. You need to know, obviously, when to walk away too and then come back because timing doesn't work. But you need to lean in with the partners that are strategic. Have you know planning with you that align to the market, that align to maybe verticals, that you're going after services? You know all of that because it very quickly, if you get too broad, it gets complicated where you're not getting the leverage that you would expect.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I think is so often missed when we talk about that balance between sort of depth versus breadth, it's quality of partner, is quality of feedback your program Having 100 partners who give you very loose feedback or having one partner that gives you really specific feedback. It's so much easier to add breadth once you've added depth and it's really hard, in terms of operational lag, the cost base cost to serve to add depth once you've gone too far the other way, and this is why partner programs are bloated with thousands of inactive partners.
Speaker 1:And so often when I speak to especially American companies and they're trying to land in Amiga for the first time and they go. So we're going to hire distribution, we're going to do, we're going to go really wide and I'm like, or how about we pick two or three partners per country? First, get a, get a headwind, understand what needs to be changed, and then we can add breadth from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's a couple examples I'm thinking of right now. I've even talked to some of the partners that we've selected and done mutual plans with. They're then highly invested in you, you're right. So if you have a smaller list and you're going all in and not doing things that are so broad, you can get the trust very quickly, you have the wins, you can get the scale very quickly and it can be fun. I mean you see immediate success out of that come from creating those mutual plans together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's so much easier for a partner to believe in you in the medium to long term if they think they are going to be able to capture huge market share.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And that's a really tough conversation. When you go, by the way, we're also going to onboard another hundred partners in your territory, right and so, especially when I look at Europe and I see, hey, if I'm going to be one of three German partners and that's a big economy, I know I'm going to be pretty well served. And, as opposed to what I often see people going, we're not quite sure what's going to work, so we're going to throw everything and then see what sticks?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it gets diluted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just think you're harming yourself because any success that is seen feels so small relative to what it could have been.
Speaker 2:Correct, absolutely.
Speaker 1:One of the you know, as a sales leader myself, one of the most important relationships that I try and have is with the CFO, for a few reasons. One they control the purse strings. The key reasons that channel leaders should be so ingrained into the CFO is the end state of a channel when you hit maturity, is extremely profitable, right. You've delegated a lot of responsibility outside of your business. The beginning state not so much. Right, there's a long time that can be involved. Talk to me around how you have that conversation, how you garner that trust to sort of mitigate that short-term runway versus that long-term upside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So I've been fortunate to work for some incredible CFOs. The current one that we have at New Relic is a very partner and customer-centric CFO and wanting to learn how to scale. He also knows the growth trajectory obviously that we're on and we're in this growth mindset as a company. We have incredible product, incredible technology that we want to bring the partner ecosystem in to accelerate and accelerate to more customers, expand in new territories all of that.
Speaker 2:So, first and foremost, you have to include the CFO in your strategy, be able to articulate what you're working on together. Did that with some of the partner program changes, headcount that you're asking for and ensuring that it's well aligned to the sales strategy and the go-to-market and well connected, obviously, to the company vision. If you can articulate that to a CFO, that makes sense. To the particular one that I am working with today and we have already been working together on some very large consulting firm partnerships together he's been on the phone with me articulating the vision Partners love to hear from CFOs.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's not the norm. We have a very customer and partner-centric leadership team here from the top down. From the top down CEO, cro, our customer success leader, cfo, our COO everyone is all in, you know, with partners and wanting to be part of that. But you're absolutely right, the CFO and you. You have to then continue to communicate with your CFO on here's where we're making progress, here's um, here's the impact that it's driving in a certain region, here's the customers that we acquired, here's the ones that we're expanding together. So just keep the communication with not only your CFO but your C-suite.
Speaker 1:I think is extremely important is that revenue is a team sport. Right, it's really easy to sort of turn around to sales and go off you go, but actually that's not how any of the most successful businesses do it. But revenue is a team sport. It's not for middle management or the troops, it's also for the C-suite. I'd love to hear some examples around how you've brought in the C-suite to drive those partner relationships and some of the outcome changes that bringing reinforcements has. Sure so yeah, great question.
Speaker 2:So, again, I'm fortunate that I have a leadership team that has they've run channel before, some are prior channel chiefs very customer and partner centric, very customer and partner centric. So it's easier to embrace the channel and the partner ecosystem and have it be natural for them to do that. The majority of the time that our CEO and CRO spends daily is with customers and partners on the road and I think, knowing that it's easier for them to engage with partners, we have a new APJ partner that just started, very partner-centric, is pinging me and letting me know hey, I've met with this partner today. This is what they said. And then you have salespeople see that it's driven and it's a company mission, just not a partner team mission. It's we're in this, you know the channel and the partner, you know ecosystem and driving that. If you have that mindset that we're all in as a company, then it cascades down into the rest of the organization. So, again, a perfect example of this would be a large consulting firm that we just started to engage with.
Speaker 2:I was brought into a conversation from our CFO. After having initial conversation, he had initial conversation with them. After having initial conversation, he had initial conversation with them. We have then identified some strategic accounts, brought in our sales leadership and some of our sellers into how can we work on projects together. He's been part of all of those conversations. They've seen it, they're impressed, and I continually get feedback from partners that this is not normal to have this executive engagement that it seems to be. You know, most vendors that they work with they only see the partner team or an alliance team. They're not seeing all of us on the same call, for instance the same call, for instance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny, I was recording a podcast yesterday and we were talking about if you're a partner, first organization, it's crazy that then different departments won't be involved in those conversations. And I think that's even more true of executive, especially if you've got this very sort of depth partnership play right where we're going to do strategic, because not only is there always some level of friction between direct sellers and partner team, but if at the top there is a unified front and if your partners see that unified front, that only tells everyone how serious you are about sort of taking that cohesive strategy to market.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. Another example just to share. This is I was on a two hour meeting yesterday with one of our cloud partners and on the call was co-build, co-market and co-sell. We're all on the same call together their team and our team. It wasn't three separate calls. So that's powerful because if you can make sure that you're well aligned and show the partner that here's what we're building, here's how we're going to market together and here's how we're working on co-sell motions to support our mutual customers and to accelerate in the market together, we could have done three separate meetings, but we all wanted to be on the same and the feedback at the end of the two-hour session which seems like that's a long meeting to sit through from their cloud team said this is the most impressive meeting that we've had in a long time with your organization. You're standing out amongst other vendors that were working together because we seem as though we're extremely well aligned with each other.
Speaker 1:So it excited everybody at the end of the call because there's been a lot of work that was put into it, but that's impactful 100%, and in this partnerships game, that impression is so valuable because it's not one customer right, it's every customer underneath that one partner, and so the stakes are almost so much higher because partner lifetime value dwarfs customer lifetime value Right. One of the key lessons that I've really taken from recording these podcasts has always been from AWS sort of describe themselves as the most customer obsessed company in the world, which I think is particularly interesting when we talk about partner strategy. How do you ensure that you have a customer centric partner strategy? To blend a lot of complicated words together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I spend a lot of time. I'm in every single forecast call. I am brought into deals, whether it be initially with a partner or not. I listen to how we're marketing and what's the most relevant out there and how customers are engaging with New Relic. I spend time listening to what we're building with others and how we're addressing some of the pain points and some of the challenges. I listen to use cases and then align that to the partner strategy.
Speaker 2:If you're building a partner ecosystem in a silo, it doesn't work. If you're not well connected to the rest of the work period, it doesn't work. So there are no silos here. I have always been highly involved with the rest of the organization and I think one of the other facets that you need to do is having. When I say customer-centric partner strategy, I truly mean that. So, however, a customer wants to engage with us, I need to have all routes to market completed. So if they want to engage in marketplace, we have it taken care of. If they want to engage in marketplace with one of their partners, we have that.
Speaker 2:If it's a GSI, if it's an alliance partner, if it's a VAR, if it's a large reseller, I think that's really important. Also, another big piece of the ecosystem for us, as I just talked about, is that those influence partners and those consulting partners. Customers are engaging throughout the rest of the ecosystem and it's together. It could be a customer starts at a consulting partner on a project, starts at a consulting partner on a project, then it moves to. It could be a position, to a VAR or a LAR, it could move to an SI and then you can have a services partner or a hyperscaler. All on the same opportunity, all with the same customer. So we all have to figure out how to best align to make sure that we're always thinking customer first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other bit that I love about having a customer first partner strategy is inevitably there's some level of friction. Right, lots of partners are involved in the same deal and maybe there is some friction between partners and you're always going to leave that conversation with someone feeling slightly aggrieved and it's so much easier to have that conversation when you go. But this is right for the customer Because while it's a bitter pill to swallow, it's an understandable one and that is what preserves long-term partnerships, because long-term partnerships always have friction through them, but it's the reasoning behind it and how it's handled and it's so much easier to stand on the truth when the truth is this is what's right for the end user and then everyone understands okay, that's the right long-term philosophy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's pretty standard now that you have multiple partners within a customer. If you have a customer-centric strategy and you clearly understand that the customer is dictating. Now They've already done their research and figured out who they want to work with or have researched the technology and are now engaging in certain facets you know, within the ecosystem to help you know, address their business outcome, their challenge, their use case, whatever it is. So I think it's it used to be where partners were saying to a customer hey, I think you know you should transact through this partner. It's customer driven. Now customers are telling you how they're going to, so you better be ready on having that each route to market um taken care of and and and well engaged. And I think the other piece from just from a customer-centric strategy to help the partners, you have to spend time with enabling them and doing certifications and making sure that they're well-trained to identify opportunities and feel comfortable positioning your product. So I think that's important too and that's how you get scale.
Speaker 1:The good news for this podcast is, every time you add a new partner into a customer, the channel gets slightly more complicated, which means we have endless topics to cover, which is good, but we're going to pivot to one of my favorite topics. I'm slightly obsessed with hiring. I think it is arguably the most valuable skills set a leader can have, which is hire great people and then maybe get out of the way and just set direction. One of the complicated things about being in your position is you have to hire people in regions that you're not going to be in and are in different time zones, so you need to have a huge amount of trust. What are the qualities that you look for in candidates to ensure you make great hires?
Speaker 2:Customer centric mindset, growth mindset, obviously clearly understands the partner. I think one of the biggest things is you know. We always say you know partnerships matter and relationships matter. I asked them to give me examples. We're going through a ton of interviews right now because we are in a growth stage, both from a sales and go-to-market and channel perspective. But other places in the organization and I think when you're talking to candidates, they also need to have diverse. They have to have a clear understanding of how the partner ecosystem has changed and it's much more diverse. They have to have a clear understanding of how the partner ecosystem has changed and it's much more diverse than it used to be. So some have been extremely specialized, meaning they've only spent parts, they've only had experience with certain parts of the the ecosystem, and you have to have it more broad. You need to understand how GSIs work differently than than CSPs, then work differently than bars, then you know it's all and speak their language. I think is extremely important.
Speaker 1:And and talk to me. I hear people say growth mindset a lot, which I think certain people, we all, have a slightly different definition, and what would be helpful for the context of this conversation is give me the definition and then how do you find out whether they do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I always talk to candidates and you are talking about this is we're in a build and it's a build on an incredible organization. We have the technology market leader, have all the great things going for us, I think, to get to that next level of growth. We are building out this partner ecosystem and the teams and all the supporting functions around that to accelerate, I think, long-term, I think long-term. I think one of the things for me is, you know, embracing change and knowing that you're in a build is different for for some people and for some candidates where some candidates are that we've talked to, clearly understand that and are fired up and want to be part of that and are running to let me help build it and be impactful, and I have this network.
Speaker 2:And then some are not builders and that's okay, as we've gone through some of the interviews and understand where we are, I think you can't not be a builder by being in this space and being in technology. Technology is ever changing, so you really have to embrace change, be uncomfortable, you know. Be comfortable feeling uncomfortable, truly believe that. You know every day is different, but I think that the build is fun, the build is exciting 100% different, um, but I think that the build is fun.
Speaker 1:The build is exciting. 100 my the. The test that I always do, especially when you work at smaller startups, I think it's how do people react to problems right and do they run towards them sure, or do they take a step backwards? And to me, if I, it's really easy to cope someone through how to handle problems better. It's impossible to get that instinct drilled into someone that when something is on fire, they run towards, not a way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's an opportunity.
Speaker 1:There we go Exactly, embrace the pain and enjoy. You know, to me I I always find if I'm not stressed, I'm bored. There is like there is no middle ground. It's it's, it's fairly binary and so, yeah, I love, I love that firefighting process.
Speaker 2:It's always yeah, me too. That's why I'm here.
Speaker 1:It's exciting so onto my pet project in this podcast, which is to educate the masses that people only get to your position or to your level by standing on the shoulders of giants and getting a lot of help to get there, and then the really good ones pay it forward. Talk to me about what mentorship has meant for your career and how you continue to play a part in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mentorship is a has been always a very big deal for me and will continue, is I want to give back to to others. I've been fortunate to have some incredible mentors, have some here already and just in a short time and I think mentorship for me is some of the most probably prominent conversations I've ever had or opportunities that I've been fortunate to be given came from conversations from mentors. You have to ask some of the hard questions. I think sometimes mentoring is looked at as it needs to be, this formal program, and it doesn't. You can simply say, hey, do you have five minutes? People naturally want to help others. It's people naturally want to help others. So I get a ton out of mentorship.
Speaker 2:Fast forward in my career, I've helped people get new jobs. I actually was just. I just received a message from somebody the other day that I mentored them. They said over 10 years ago and one of the conversations I had with them is I said you can do more and this is what your strength is. And I'm not sure if people have ever outlined this the person is now a vice president and within 10 years, have continually pushed herself to get to that level. That's a big deal to me. So I think again I want to give back, and it doesn't have to be formal. I mentor people outside of work. I could be on the weekend taking fielding a call for for five minutes and say, hey, I need to run something by you. I do the same thing. So I think it's really, really. Mentorship is fun. You get a lot out of it.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you get more out of it than maybe a mentee gets out of it after you finish those conversations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's someone. I was joking around with someone and they say you teach what you need to learn.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Which is there's something super powerful in there which is I have built Chan channex's entire revenue motion has been built from uh feedback, from uh people that I probably have no right to speak to and give me a lot of free advice, which is helpful, but then following that advice on and passing that down, that to me has actually been the most rewarding bit. And you sort of sit there and you help. I spend a lot of time with young salespeople who are trying to find their way in a complicated ecosystem and to me, that is, yeah, it's just the best bit. It just really is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm actually part of an organization where they do this speed mentoring session that I've been part of every time I go to this and there are some some younger leaders that are spending time and and they'll get, they'll sit in front of you and they'll, and I'll say, well, ask me the hardest question that you don't think that you can possibly, you know, ask what's, what's the undercurrent? And some of them are, oh, I don't want to share it. They tend to be you know. And some of them are, oh, I don't want to share it, they tend to be, you know, maybe they'll get embarrassed or I could never ask this question. And you know what I always say is we me at this level have asked all of those questions. So don't be shy. You're never going to learn if you don't ask some of the scary questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've been really fortunate. And, by the way, if anyone wants to find out the fastest way to get a load of mentors, it's start a podcast and interview a lot of people. That's the real secret sauce. But I have been constantly amazed that the most senior people I speak to are the ones that spend the most time being mentors, because it's been so important for them to get to their level and they're good human beings so they pass it on, and that has been. And then I speak to more junior people and they're less of a fan and I find that almost counterintuitive. But when you actually logically work through, it sort of makes sense yes.
Speaker 2:So yeah, continue to give back. That would be my feedback to everybody out there. It's, it's I mean, it's only going to lift the entire and selfishly, from a channel perspective and partner perspective, is we need to rise up and bring those leaders up through the ranks 100%.
Speaker 1:I'm getting sort of fascinated by this topic that the altruistic reason is the cynical reason and so it feels very altruistic to give back. But the irony of the ecosystem that we work in is, if you spend a lot of time giving back, it'll come back around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're building the future.
Speaker 1:No different than children. It becomes cynical right when you sort of go oh, there's a really cynical reason to do this. But no, I think it's a wonderful thing to do. I am certainly not above asking for advice, which is why we finish every podcast by asking our current guest to recommend our next guest. Larissa, who do you have in mind?
Speaker 2:Yes, so Kim King she's channel chief of PTC. She just started there. She'd be a great person to talk to. I know she personally mentors. She's built some incredible organizations partner programs, ecosystem alliances, all of that and I think you'll definitely have some fun with her.
Speaker 1:Awesome, Kim. We're coming for you, Larissa. Thank you so much for sharing your insights.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I love the conversation. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1:It's been awesome.