Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Nevzat Bucioglu - Why Demand Gen Beats Partner Enablement
Too many vendors leave partners to figure out demand generation on their own—and it’s not working.
This week on Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Nevzat Bucioglu, Channel Lead for the DACH region at Commvault, to discuss why partner enablement alone isn’t enough—and how vendors can truly fuel partner demand and drive long-term success.
- Why traditional MDF spending, especially on telemarketing fails
- How a "nurture-first" strategy creates higher-quality, sales-ready leads
- The power of co-selling: why vendors should stop throwing leads at partners and start closing deals together
- Why demand generation should take priority over enablement, and how real-world experience is the best training
- How adapting messaging to local markets can make or break your GTM strategy
If you want practical, no-nonsense insights on how vendors can better support partners, this is an episode you don’t want to miss!
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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 am the VP of Revenue here at Channext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest Nevzat. How are you doing? I'm good today. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. We did a prep call before and I think you're running a really interesting part of the market. Maybe, for the uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of a rundown of who you are and what you're responsible for.
Speaker 2:Yes, my name is Nevda Budiulu. I'm responsible at Commvault for our channel business in the central region, which is the famous Dach market in Poland.
Speaker 1:Awesome. In the central region, which is the famous Dach Market in Poland Awesome, I know. One of the really interesting things about working in channel is channel seems to bring people in from various backgrounds. You have done IT, sales, pre-sales, product marketing and now in the channel. How has that history influenced your sort of channel decision-making criteria?
Speaker 2:Yeah, influence your sort of channel decision-making criteria. Yeah, it helps me a lot, so to say, because in general you are near everybody wears many hats Is it sales, pre-sales marketeer, business development manager, sometimes event organizer all with one goal which is ultimately building pipeline. And having had so many roles in the past gives, on one side, the confidence and, on the other side, also the experience talking to multiple people in the channel and also to alliance partners, who actually are partners and vendors 100%.
Speaker 1:I often say I think that channel people make great entrepreneurs because, you know, I've done everything from finance and operations all the way through to sort of marketing strategy, because you're speaking to different partners about different parts of their business and how to be successful. So, yeah, if you want to make yourself into a great entrepreneur, I think building a career in channels a nice place to start. Yeah, couldn't have said it better. One of the things I'm most passionate about when it comes to channel strategy is about partner demand gen or demand generation, because I think that's the one area of the channel that we've not quite worked out as a channel business. A lot of the times, vendors sort of delegate that responsibility down to partners and just say off you go, go and build business. Talk to me about why that strategy maybe isn't the most effective.
Speaker 2:From my experience over the last two decades in IT sales and then the last years in channel, it leaves out a lot of parts which are crucial for a really, really working channel vendor relationship. So first of all, it leaves out the mentoring and shadowing part. So once you do the enablement, typically vendors leave the partner alone finding the projects and then pitching it and everything, but nobody is there to mentor or shadow them, to coach them, to say that was good, that could be better, because typically we from the vendor are the experts in selling our products and we leave the partner alone in the most critical part. The second is, without these mentoring and shadowing, the bonding effect of winning or losing together in deals and having great experiences, maybe in joint customer appointments, is also being missed. So the second part is missed opportunities of forging the relationship between the sales teams of both companies and then you cannot practice the knowledge in the real life projects.
Speaker 2:And also it's a waste of money, it's a waste of for me, it would be a waste of my marketing dollars because a lot of partners who start selling the product need to do a couple of trial and errors until they find out what is working in demand generation. If I leave them alone and I don't guide them, what is working? We waste not only a lot of marketing dollars, but we waste also a lot of time. And then, after six months of not having spent time together, not building pipeline, not winning something together, you see that the relationship gets colder and colder, so to say, and the newly established partnership hasn't accelerated because the partner's been left alone. And I think this is the most critical part in a in a starting relationship that the vendor and the partner are really doing co-marketing from a to z, from first call until the closing I love that.
Speaker 1:I often think you know leads are an amazing tool within the channel, but so often I think they're just misused. You go okay, so we've got a new partner, let's chuck them. Some leads, get them interested and then we'll see them later. As opposed to using leads as your education, they are your onboarding right, we could close these leads direct, but we're going to close them with you to show you why we are valuable, not just because there's money there, but to take you through the actual opportunity process. Right, here's how you close, here's how we build a relationship as peers. Here's how we're investing in you.
Speaker 1:But so often, instead, we throw leads at partners. Maybe they don't close those partners because they've not been well enabled, but also maybe they do close them and then the partner has been taught to expect free leads, right, and so the whole thing is just sort of broken. And I love your sort of bit because it's the real nuance of the channel. We are a relationships business, right, and so part of going into battle together is we get used to working together, and if you miss that element, you miss the beers and all the good stuff that comes with it. Right? Then suddenly you're just missing out on an opportunity to build that relationship.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it's not only about winning, even if we jointly lose the project for whatever reasons it is, but you have this experience of spending time together, get to know each other, bonding, forging the relationship, and then you can find two, three, four more projects and close them 100%.
Speaker 1:Now pivoting to maybe the most controversial thing that we're going to get onto this podcast MDF. I think MDF is a double-edged sword. I've seen it used brilliantly to drive joint vendor and partner success. I've also seen it used to fund nights out that, while entertaining, do absolutely nothing from a revenue perspective. One of the common ways in which they're deployed is for telemarketing. That often fails because it fails to really generate pipeline. Maybe a two-part question why do you think it fails so much? And maybe what should vendors be doing instead?
Speaker 2:So, while it's failing that much, I think it's down to what we already discussed in terms of enablement and relationship. I cannot expect from a telemarketing agency and they are super people, very talented but if they don't know the product and I cannot crash, train them in two or three hours to find me the leads. That's how it's been set up from the very beginning. And then why? And what we are doing differently is we are not doing telemarketing, so no MDF are going into telemarketing. That was a brute force decision. So what we are doing, as an example where we see a lot of really, really great success, is nurturing, which means typically, we call a customer who maybe has never heard of Commvault or our value proposition and maybe I'm finding him off guard, wrong situation, wrong timing. So what we do is we put more emphasis in the definition of what would be an idle prospect B and then take time to take the customer to multiple contact points, to a position where he wants to learn more, position where he wants to learn more, and we coupled this with a concept I've learned from retail, which means digital first. So this is then maybe a small video like Instagram, real style 60 seconds, 90 seconds and invite him in a 10-minute webinar, invite him then in a 20-minute webinar, invite him even maybe in a two-hour digital trade show, trade fair, and create those multiple touch points where the customer sees and hears more about our solution and value proposition. And With each of those interactions we have a call to reason where we can contact him and, for example, ask how did you find the last online event? What were you missing? All those kinds of things. And after a period of time, let's say eight to 10 contacts, the customer has interest so we can maybe set up an on-site meeting.
Speaker 2:An on-site meeting Funny enough, if you check the telemarketing leads one of the really rare ones it takes also like 15 to 20 calls, which is over a span of 10 to 12 weeks.
Speaker 2:But when we do this nurturing at the end we get much more leads out of it and it appeases also the mind of a lot of people who are hybrid working, so we don't know when they are in the office, so we never have a chance maybe to reach them at the right time with our cold call. And then on the other side we try to gain the trust from the prospect. So he invites us to a meeting on site and this relates at the end to a very, very low no-show rate or meetings didn't get denied at the very end because the prospect made a decision that we are interesting enough that he wants to spend time. And it's also very cost efficient because I can run an online zoom meeting with 10 prospects for 30 minutes and if only five have interests, I do a follow-up with only of those five. Just imagine if I would need to do 10 on-site meetings.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's more time and effort yeah, I, uh I sort of constantly smash this drum because, you know, the joke I always tell on this podcast is I've never spoken to an Apple salesperson in my life, but I've bought every single one of their products and that's what they index on nurture. Right, they've just gone full brand marketing. I know nothing about the product, I don't know how many megapixels are in the camera, but you buy the product because you are part of that nurture flow and yet when we come to trying to generate deals, we then go no, we're going to do it differently, we're going to throw people at the problem and it's not, it's a marketing problem?
Speaker 1:right, it's a. It's a. How do we help vendors and partners come together with a defined marketing strategy that allows us to scalably generate that demand? And that is not done by outbound. It fundamentally isn't done by outbound at any consumer business and even when we took it, the really sharp end of enterprise, that's more account-based marketing. Right, there definitely is outbound involved, but, like you say, it's a lot of nurture stuff, it's a lot of education, a lot of thought leadership and it all comes together in a cohesive strategy. The brands that build that with their partners in mind, those are the ones that win Exactly Love it.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I was extremely surprised in our preparation call to find out is the weighting that you place on partner enablement versus demand generation. Now, most brands spend 90 to 95 percent of their time focus programs on enablement. How do we service customers effectively? And then we sort of hope that the partners, because they understand how to service customers, will generate their demand. You don't do the same thing. You heavily weight it towards demand gen and way less. Maybe 70 percent on demand gen, 30 percent on partner enablement, maybe. Why, and what's the outcome?
Speaker 2:Yes. So why We've done an analysis and you explained it just a few moments ago that demand generation is mainly nurturing and content, which means creating awareness, attention, interest, explaining stuff. So nearly 80% of what vendors can use in demand generation and to nurture can also be used in enablement. So that's why we say even the enablement piece is being used in demand generation and vice versa, and explained at the very beginning of the podcast.
Speaker 2:Nothing molds and forges a relationship better than success. So finding projects and practicing together, the pitching, practicing together, objection handling, practicing together, how to quote, and everything, that's the ultimate enablement, if you want to say on the front line and then winning and losing together and doing, then maybe a deal review afterwards, that's the ultimate fireproof enablement. So that's why we insist in doing much more demand generation to create these scenarios where we need to pitch together, which helps not only the partner to understand us, but it also helps us to understand the partner. What is his compensation model, what is his capability, what is his organization really good at, and vice versa. So our pitch at the end is really beneficial for each other and this is the best enablement ever 100% agree.
Speaker 1:It's rare that I hear someone talk so prescriptively around why demand chain is important. My analogy always is you don't try to learn how to drive a car without driving the car. So why would we spend all day in programs, building academia, right? Hey, read this, uh, read this case study, read this uh, fact sheet. It's to me it's all like how do we use it? So let's get in the car, let's drive together. I'll teach you and we can get on the journey quickly, and we'll learn more by winning or losing we will on a partner portal.
Speaker 2:and let me, let me use your car analogy even if I'm on the wrong road, but I can change the course of my car only when the car is moving, yeah, otherwise I'm just uh, uh, you know, putting my hands on the steering wheel and nothing happens. Like you say, it's artificial, it's academia. But I need, at one point, just go ahead and then I can change course, I can change direction, and this is why we put so much emphasis on demand generation. And the success is really there, because we are identifying new sales teams within channel partners. We um are reigniting um passive relationships from the past, because we we are all sales and the ultimate um resource everybody has is at the end uh time and he wants to get his commission. So our goal is really to help the partners finding the projects and closing them, and nothing is sweeter than winning deals. That's why our emphasis is on demand generation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree and it's the first time anyone's ever continued my analogy. But one of the leadership principles for AWS and it's my favorite leadership principle, something I spend a lot of time talking to the team around is bias for action. Much by doing things, even doing them wrong, because you get a whole new set of data. One of the data points that I know you've really talked about a lot is German cloud right, and which you've pivoted into your messaging. You can only do that once you've tested it, and if you never test it, you never learn right, and so one of the things I think is so important when building partnerships, building strategy, building vision, is to try. When building partnerships, building strategy, building vision is to try, and then from there we can pivot and go again. You talked a lot with your MSPs about German cloud and it triggered an enormous performance difference. Can you walk us through how you discovered that that was the right way to talk about it?
Speaker 2:It's a couple of years ago in the same role in a different company, when we tried to break into the MSP space and offer cloud when we received pushback. And when we received pushback, one of the things I learned from my experiences is to sit down and ask why? So? Ask the target group, why, what's the reason? What should we do differently? So I got in touch with MSPs and they then educated me. They educated me about the reluctance of German customers regarding cloud, not from a technology perspective, but more from a data sovereignty perspective. They don't know where the data has been located. They don't want that it's going outside the European Union, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:So that's when I talked to an MSP and said, okay, so what would be the ideal messaging? And then he said, look, if we would only tell our customers that their data will never leave German soil because our data centers are in Germany and we can guarantee it. So that's when I simply asked in the meeting why don't we name it German Cloud, simply as that, and then explain what does it mean? And then we did it. And then we did it and the result was really way beyond what we expected, just because we addressed this fear in the mind by asking the customers what's the number one objection? And then we created also not a very, very difficult term we just created this German cloud term, explained it in one sentence, like your data will never leave German soil, and that helped overcome those objections, or this objection, and then with the MSP, we won a couple of deals. It showed me how important it is to adapt the message to face the objection of our target group instead of just refining refining our message without talking to our target group.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm constantly. I'm such a business nerd, but I'm constantly surprised how many great ideas just come straight word for word from customer experience Like and so you know a lot, of, a lot of people will talk about. You know the greatest businesses in the world and what they did. Airbnb is a story I often hear around.
Speaker 1:You know we need to do this, this and this and these great strategies and then when you find out the root cause, it's always from hey, this product doesn't work properly, it'd be great if you could do this. Or this strategy isn't work, it'd be great. And then the greatest leaders just get that feedback and then actually implement that feedback and then, as a result, you get huge, radical change, which I think is a real lesson to the people listening, which is get in front of your customers, get in front of your partners and have those tough conversations that will allow you to actually drive progression. Awesome. So your channel is evolving rapidly. I think maybe faster in Germany than almost anywhere else. What are the biggest trends that you see that are going to shape channel strategy and how we should move forward?
Speaker 2:For me it's three. So the first is it's everything around SaaS adoption. So really the software as a service is kicking in the German market and a lot of German resellers in the channel are adapting to it. But with the SaaS adoption comes also digital transformation, which means leveraging AI to personalize sales, scale sales in a clever way. Digital enablement so what we discussed earlier, not only having those physical boot camps really like digital one online. Second thing is learning from social media, which means content first enablement and community building, something like what we, what we do now podcasts, interactive webinars, gamification, micro learning so nobody wants to listen to 60 minutes of podcasts, maybe five to 10. And then the next nugget of knowledge, then the next nugget of knowledge that resonates with partners as well. And ecosystem collaboration and strategic alliances. No vendor can dominate the market by himself. So as a vendor, it's crucial to find strong ecosystems with strategic partners, synergistic partners and sometimes even competitors to address the same channel partners, because there is a fight for awareness on the market and the channel partner needs to decide to whom he wants to listen and we need to make sure that the time is not wasted and we are getting very attractive and how the vendors should prepare for it.
Speaker 2:Digital enablement I mentioned it a couple of times. It's really using access on demand, making it really fun and simple to ingest the knowledge. It's all about communities. A lot of things is everybody is saying. People buy from people they like, so the communities needs to be including social media best practices, having regular online events, being vibrant, being funny, being energized. So the people want to spend in my case, want to spend time with Comvote channel team, with me as Nevzat, and then strengthen the ecosystem. So bring in the alliance partners into the same community. I think this will be within the next five years will evolve the DACH channel market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. I want to particularly call one out that I see a lot of people making a mistake, which is when they have meetings, when they take their customers out, when they take their partners out, they show loads of personality. That's why they are successful channel people, successful leaders, because they have great personality. And then they do marketing videos and they suddenly turn into some corporate robot.
Speaker 1:That is interesting or funny or shows any personality. And I sit there and I just sort of wonder is is a mistake that I fell into a lot when in the early days if you go back and watch some of the early days of this podcast it's very serious, it's very dry, there's nothing in there and for me, what we've seen is the more that you are authentic to who you are, yes, the better it goes right. So if you are serious, that's fine. It's got to be who you are. But if you are funny and you are, uh, you want to make stupid jokes and you want to have a bit of personality, oh, trust me, it'll go so much better yeah, this, this.
Speaker 2:This brings me to something which which I just want to add in, is we believe here at Commvault, in the channel, in something called human to human business. So there is no B2B and B2C, because I, as Nevzat, don't have a different personality. I can throw over like a coat, so I'm 90% the same in private, like a business. Maybe in business I curse less than in a football stadium, but you get my point. At the end it's pretty much like you said, it's the same personality. So, and on the other side there are the reseller partners. They are the customers, who are also human beings. They like to laugh, they like to smile.
Speaker 2:Of course, the content needs to be really good and and stick to the point. But how I transfer the content, how I get into the relationship building mode with my counterpart, um, this is the big competitive advantage for the next three to five years, um, and that's that's why I think human-to-human really addresses this. And then, on the other side, it saves time because by just a joke or an analogy I'm using in an enablement session or in a storytelling pitch, maybe five customers show up and they say I liked it, but then it's immediately a connection to those five human beings, and then the whole cycle of getting to know each other, identifying maybe a project is shortened versus the traditional one and it also saves my time and also the time of my counterparts. Like you say authentic, and I think this is the biggest magnet in business 100%.
Speaker 1:I think my favorite part of the job is this podcast, and I've spoken to some outrageously senior people that I probably don't have any right to be speaking to, and the thing that I've noticed when I speak to really the top of the top yeah, they're just normal people, they're really great, they're funny, they're kind, they're warm.
Speaker 1:And suddenly you go, oh, there's a reason they are that successful. It's not because they have an IQ of 300 or they just it's because they are warm people that people want to be in business with for 35 years. And it turns out after 35 years of doing business, they're pretty bloody successful. And so that's my advice to any of the junior people that listen, maybe even some of the senior, which is, hey, if you build good relationships and you do what you say and you're enjoyable to be around, you're probably going to go quite far. Well said, awesome. So, nevzat, one more. We like to be lazy and efficient and build relationships on this podcast, so we always like to ask our current guest who they think we should have on next. Who do you have in mind?
Speaker 2:I have two gentlemen in mind. One is my colleague running the NetApp channel business. His name is Henning Rai, an outstanding character and leader Fits perfectly into the philosophy you described. And the second one is running the Foyitsu channel Julius Berger.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, Julius, we're coming from you, Henning. We're coming from you, Nevzat. It's been awesome hearing your experiences today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.