Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Ian Thompson - SMB Channel Marketing Done Right
What does it take to drive real demand in the channel and empower partners for long-term success?
This week on Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Ian Thompson, Head of America's SMB Marketing at Cisco, to dive deep into the strategies that fuel partner engagement, demand generation, and sustainable growth. With over a decade of experience spanning distribution, partner marketing, and SMB strategy, Ian shares his unique perspective on what truly moves the needle in channel marketing.
In this episode, we explore: How Ian’s background in distribution shaped his approach to channel strategy
- The 96% success rate of Cisco’s MDF investments—and the best practices that make it work
- Why in-person events still deliver high-impact partner engagement (when done right)
- How Cisco helps partners move beyond one-off lead generation to build long-term demand engines
- The future of cloud adoption in the SMB space and the biggest barriers holding partners back
If you’re looking for proven strategies to maximize MDF, engage partners, and drive lasting growth, this episode is packed with insights you don’t want to miss.
Connect with Ian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ithompson1/
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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 Efe, I'm the Demand Generation Manager here at Chennax and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, Ian. Ian, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well.
Speaker 1:Efe, how are you? I'm doing well as well. Thank you for having me, of course. Thank you for joining us. We've been engaging with each other's posts on LinkedIn for quite a while. You're also a fellow podcast host, so I'm really excited for the conversation. And well, cisco is a giant in the channel space. You mentioned that you have worked with thousands of partners just in the US, and it's also a vendor that is heavily investing in the SMB market, and you're also part of that SMB marketing team in the US. Well, channel SMB and marketing are our bread and butter here on this podcast, so I'm excited for this conversation.
Speaker 2:Me too. I'm a channel kid, channel guy. Grew up 10, 11 years in the channel now, so most of my professional career has been spent working with two-tier and one-tier partners, so this couldn't be a better fit for me.
Speaker 1:It's amazing and for the uninitiated, it would be amazing if you could give us an introduction and tell us where you've been and what you're responsible for right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, thank you. So I lead today America's SMB marketing for Cisco. Previous to that I did a little bit of partner marketing at Cisco, but I came from ScanSource, so a distributor, working there for seven plus years all seven, believe it or not with Cisco. So started in product marketing, took on some business development and then ultimately led a team over their networking and security business unit, inclusive of Cisco. So got to see, grew up in that two-tier partner space, getting to see how those partners went to market, made money, were profitable, not only with Cisco but with obviously some of our competitors.
Speaker 1:Now yeah, amazing, and you also run a podcast for Cisco called Small Business, big Solutions.
Speaker 2:I do yeah.
Speaker 2:Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, 20 plus episodes in. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world every time we do an episode because everyone we interview is smarter than me, EFA, so I know we're doing that later. I can't wait to talk to you and Alex on there and you guys fit that description perfectly. But it's a short forum, kind of like this 20, 24-minute episodes getting the perspective of leadership or executives or thought leaders in the SMB space and identifying whether it's trends or hot takes or even just things that they're seeing that are relevant to our partners and to our end customer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it, and thank you for inviting us on your podcast as well, and for everyone who's listening. Stay tuned, go to Small Business, big Solutions. We'll be on there on an episode very soon. Yeah, so, ian, you've been in HLM for 11 years, starting on the distribution side at ScanSource, and, funny enough, we also have two people in ChenX that also started their career in distribution and worked at ScanSource. How was your experience in distribution shaped your approach to channel marketing and partner engagement today?
Speaker 2:I think it's everything. It's the only perspective I have, honestly, but it's a perspective that I think is invaluable. When I came to Cisco, my first mentor, michael Hopfinger, who was a SVP at Cisco and now is at Parallels, gave me the advice. He was like you have insights and perspective, having worked at distribution, that no one else who hasn't had that experience will have. And he was like don't ever take it for granted, because you know where the rubber meets the road. You understand that business that two-tier partners have and truly I kind of laughed at it in the moment.
Speaker 2:But now I look back and there's been so many moments where whether I'm talking to a partner or writing content for a partner or even getting the opportunity to speak in front of partners, that that perspective and understanding their business model and how that's evolved over the past decade which is crazy to say has been invaluable to me. I think it's an appreciation of truly what they do out in the field. They do everything from running a truck to the marketing to obviously scaling a business and adding in whether it's new architectures or business models with as a service and the agent model. Now that exists out there and it's a lot and a lot of these partners are smaller, two-tier partners that only have a handful of people at the top making these decisions and growing the business, and I think it's so enviable and incredible of what they do and truly the way that they're able to allow us to scale our business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we also had a lot of guests on this podcast who have worked in distribution before or who started their careers in distribution, and they always say that it has been invaluable for them, because you get to see and pick up things that you normally wouldn't do if you're working on the vendor or partner side, because you're in between the two, so you see the best of both worlds and you see things that you normally wouldn't have the chance to experience. So it's great to hear that it's also been your experience as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Also, I think I gave you this example, Like it just you learn to speak a language that I think others coming in from the outside like there's a learning curve for sure of a lot of these things, both from explaining what it is, the channel is. I don't know if my parents have gotten it yet. We're, like I said, 11 years in, but it's things that you kind of take for granted. But then when you talk to some from the outside, you're like oh okay, this is truly a unique experience and knowledge that we have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we also talked about this last time as well how challenging it is to explain what channel is to the people who are not a part of it, and I feel like I have the same thing with my parents. I feel like they still don't exactly know what I'm talking about, but I try to make it as simple as possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I always say it's the analogy of, like a grocery store that's the role of distribution is the same as a grocery store. Groceries don't market themselves, they market the products, they market the prices and promotions they have. So that's the best analogy I've got.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I fully agree with you. Well, to pivot to a different point, ian, in our previous discussion I remember you mentioned that 96% of the MDF that are used by your partners are used in the way that you like, or they are used in the right way, if I put it correctly. Can you tell us how do you get to that high level of number and what are some of the best tips and tricks that you learned?
Speaker 2:giving your virtual partners. Yeah, we have this incremental SMB initiative that I've had the opportunity to lead for the past two fiscal years here and it's an overlay right, it's an incremental investment on top of the traditional investments our partners are getting. So the way we kind of have been looking at it is that it's intended to be demand driving. So our traditional MDF MVF is probably, I would tell you, 70-30 demand to brand from an investment level. This was hey, let's go have 100% demand generating investment into this space. The partners have created this brand identity for themselves. My team is creating, hopefully, a brand preference and brand identity for Cisco in the SMB space. So if we can scale demand efforts through our two-tier partner and one-tier partner base, that's perfect, right. So, yes, we are at roughly 96% right now usage in that way and working on getting it higher.
Speaker 2:I think where we've had success is a little bit of trial and error, but identifying the right partners who not only are invested in Cisco but are invested in the SMB space specifically, and that's through data and analytics that we have, but also the tribal knowledge that our partner field marketers and our partner account managers have. So it's been very collaborative and a collective effort here to drive the right results from our investments and it's taken meetings and sessions and even events with the partners of hey, this is how we would like you to use the funds or this is how other partners have been successful, and highlighting best practices for the funds and just evangelizing that within the community. So I wouldn't tell you it was that a year and a half ago, but I think we're kind of starting to get to the right mix of partners and the right mix of activities, and that time and market is obviously a benefactor here as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and do you feel like the demand from partners, the interest from partners into marketing has been growing? Do you feel like you've been getting more inquiries or partners are getting more experience and knowledge in this space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's fair to say. I think what's interesting is I think there's almost like a learning curve where it comes from. If you go and invest in a new partner, you know next quarter that we haven't invested in previously, that's obviously not going to go as smoothly as it is a partner that we've been investing in consistently. So we've piloted like we had. You know, there are always partners. Every partner is always looking for funding.
Speaker 2:So we piloted, you know, smaller investments into partners that aren't covered by a PFM or something like that previously and it didn't go as well, right, because we know the further down you get in that two-tier stack of partners, the marketing resources from the partner side aren't as prevalent.
Speaker 2:Right, they might have one person or two people, but when they're being asked to spend 10K here and 20K there and 15K there, not only from different manufacturers but from Cisco, we're making that job tough for that marketer at the partner. So I think the interest has always been there. I think it's being smart and strategic and looking at the investments from a holistic viewpoint as best as we can on our side and saying, hey, partner A is getting 10K from base funding, they're getting 10K from this bucket, 10k from that bucket. If we're going to give them S&B dollars, we need to have a plan put in place for them to be able to use those dollars strategically and maybe in conjunction with some of the other funding buckets they've had, and that's been. I think something that we've seen improve is the way partners go to market with that funding and using it not just as kind of point in time investments but more of a strategic plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and part of your marketing strategy is doing in-person events, and you mentioned that they're highly effective for driving partner engagement, even though they are not as scalable. So, based on your experience, what? What best practices have you developed to maximize the impact of in-person events and also ensure that they lead to long-term business, long-term partner engagement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we do. You're right, we do two partner events, meaning partners or audience of the event. And I think the few kind of keys to success we've identified is one not having the event just be a point in time event, but being part of a larger initiative. So we've set these up as recurring, like hey, we'll be back next year, we're not when. We just did this right. So we just had one in January. That was we had the same event last June, same region, same mix of partners, obviously, I think, some new, some old. But we didn't tell the same story we told eight months ago. We told an evolution of that story. We've added in AI, we've added in the Cisco One story into this, and so it's a different event and a step up from what it was a year ago.
Speaker 2:The second thing is ensuring that there is a plan for every partner who attends that event.
Speaker 2:So our sales teams have a checklist, this round of events.
Speaker 2:We've actually had meetings at the event. So we dedicated like a two-hour block for one-on-one time with the partners, with their sales team, with the architecture team, but then there's a follow-up right. So every single partner coming out of that event is having a meeting scheduled at the event, after the event, and that's been critical for us in ensuring that we're not just sitting there listening during the event but we're actually following up on what we heard. So if a partner said, hey, I don't know how to start, but I want to get involved in selling collaboration solutions, great, we already have that meeting on the calendar to have that next step conversation instead of like who do we have to follow up with? So we kind of set that standard on the front end and ensured that even if there wasn't like a tangible action item, we're at least following up with every single partner that attended to get feedback on the event but also identify like hey, what was one thing you saw or heard that you'd be interested in talking or maybe you didn't know before?
Speaker 1:yeah, but I feel like I heard the opposite version of this story many times, where vendors, uh, they go to events or they do events and they talk to a lot of partners there, but after the event, two weeks, three weeks later, uh, when? And you ask them okay, but like, how many partners do you have a follow-up with? They talked to a lot of partners there, but after the event, two weeks, three weeks later, and you ask them okay, but like, how many partners do you have a follow-up with? They sometimes cannot even tell because there's no framework, there's no strategy to track that. And I think this is the game changer when it comes to events that you go there with a proper plan, it's part of something bigger, and that you have very clear next steps and action items following the events to lead to.
Speaker 2:yeah yeah, and the other thing we've done engagement. The other thing we've done help partner engagement is we've set up a webex space so we have a space for the event with every single partner attendee and and then literal Cisco person all the way on up to a VP in this room. So one of the things that occurs at these events we're running is there is a partner panel. So it's partners talking about successes they've had, or hey, we used to sell just collaboration and now we're adding security and networking and it's helped our business with stickiness and whatever else. They can tell that story to their peers better than we can ever tell it. We're going to be biased 100% of the time because it's our business, but when a partner says, hey, this is what I did and it worked, that's awesome. So the WebEx space has allowed us, one to obviously curate engagement from partners in that space. But two is continue that conversation.
Speaker 1:So as we have a win with a partner, as we identify something with a partner, we can put it in that space and just continue to carry that conversation from the event with the channel space, especially when it comes to partners, especially with MSPs, that they're so open to sharing their best practices and tips and tricks with the others, which is not something very common because, when you think about it, they're competitors but then they're very willing to openly share what has helped their business and there are some really cool brands that are also doing this really well that. I heard about that. Cultivating that partner to partner education and learning. How can we create a community where partners can share best practices and learn from each other?
Speaker 2:I love that and we're doing it in such an informal way today, but the more you can kind of box that up and set it up as like hey, this is part of our strategy is building community, and the more that gets formalized, the better it's going to be.
Speaker 1:Ian, well, we talked about. You said many vendors still rely on paying for leads and running one-off campaigns. I think this is something we both agreed, but something that you argued is that teaching partners how to create long-term, lasting demand is far more valuable. What does that shift look like in practice, then? How can vendors better enable partners to build sustainable demand engines, rather than just handing them a bunch of MQLs that won't convert or lead to anything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's the old saying give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man a fish, you feed him for life. It's true still in marketing, right, and I think there will always be a place for traditional third-party demand gen leads. If nothing else, it can be a great part of that full marketing funnel conversation where you're constantly filling the top of the funnel. Where I have an issue with it is when it's the only thing you're doing, because then it's just becoming a we're throwing a net into the ocean. We have no idea what we're fishing for. We're getting back MQLs, sqls we don't know the difference, maybe, between those and we're just throwing them to a sales team to follow up and we might've waited a week, two weeks, who knows, since those leads were even touched the first time. So that's where I think it fails. And then we point to the vendor and say, oh, this vendor is bad at what they do. They can't generate good leads. There's 100 factors that go into that conversation before you can say the vendor didn't set you up for success. But regardless of all of that, you're right. I think the future of marketing, or what good marketing strategy is, is a holistic. You're creating long-term demand, not point-in-time leads. So how do we set ourselves up to have that kind of demand creation engine running constantly instead of just spending, hey, we got 20K, we're going to go get leads this quarter with our 20K, and I think that's where you can create things like.
Speaker 2:I've seen newsletters be so successful in being a drip email strategy. Instead of just an outbound selling campaign. We're using a newsletter. That's utility marketing, where we're providing value to our customers every month and they know what to look for. It's set in a cadence. It becomes kind of that like series, like a TV show. You know, every Wednesday I want to go watch that show. Every month, you know we're getting a newsletter from our partner or our vendor and it's providing value to us and it's identifying business outcomes that we are looking to achieve.
Speaker 2:And I think that's where marketing has been going, needs to go on. The whole is we're losing sight of the bigger picture and that's where you see success in these partners is that they create these relationships. And obviously we've seen kind of marketing evolve in the past couple of years where it's case studies and testimonials that are driving that buying behavior. Use that right, use your money to curate those case studies and those stories and those experiences that your customers have had, instead of just going and throwing it at leads and then, once you build the newsletter, you can use that lead demand to maybe fill some of that send audience, instead of just going and throwing it at leads and then, once you build the newsletter, you can use that lead demand to maybe fill some of that send audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I fully agree with you. I think the challenge with this specifically is sometimes partners are skeptical that marketing is going to work, and the other challenge is that it usually takes a little bit of time and patience for partners to see the first results work. And the other challenge is that it usually takes a little bit of time and patience for partners to see the first results. A long-term marketing strategy is invaluable, but it's the partners that have to understand that. Okay, they need to invest some time and effort into this and not expect the results to come in immediately after starting to work starting to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of those that I think we get. We're kind of our own worst nightmare at times where you want to say we spend money this quarter, you get ROI this quarter. But that's not how marketing works. And if you look at deal volume and deal cycles even the fastest I think SMB our average deal cycle is something like 70 days and it probably vacillates quarter to quarter, but I don't think it's ever been below 50. So at best you're talking two months of a turn in. I would tell you the fastest turning segment that we sell into and market into, segment that we sell into and market into. So when you go up scale and you go to commercial select, you go to enterprise, you go to public sector, you're only adding time to that buying cycle. So the expectation that if you spend a dollar today you're going to get 10 back tomorrow is crazy. And so it's looking at and having the ability to track the investments long term and saying, hey, if we are investing in these partners, what processes do we have set up to track those investments? Or if we're targeting these customers, what are we setting up to track that ROI? And we use fractional attribution as a model here and that's great for a lot of things.
Speaker 2:Smb, it gets a little tough because some of the deal sizes are smaller, but then you're at least tying it to some of the marketing vehicles and touch points and you're crafting this concept of marketing engaged pipeline that is giving you a more holistic picture on the return on investment from a marketing perspective. All of that being said, if the number of sales isn't hit, none of it matters. Stock prices aren't dictated on marketing results. I look forward to that day, but I don't think we're going to get there. So, at the end of the day, you're trying to drive business results, and that's one thing that I've been fortunate here at Cisco is that I have a bookings goal and I'm trying to drive an incremental actual revenue number that aligns to my sales team's number.
Speaker 2:So that gives us a leg up, I think, in terms of alignment is we're not having this back and forth where you know I have a different number or I'm trying to drive you know I always say vanity metrics of like I got to get a 20% open rate or whatever you know marketing metric we care about. No, at the end of the day, I'm trying to drive a bookings number, they're trying to drive a bookings number. So they know, just like I know, my partners are out there using the dollars that we're investing in them to help Cisco the best way they can. My sales teams know that the marketing I'm doing is going to help them the best way it can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I fully agree with you. And to pivot to another point, I think this is also something that you talk a lot about on your podcast. You strongly believe all SMBs should be in the cloud.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:What are the biggest barriers to cloud adoption, especially in the SMB space, and how is Cisco and partners accelerating this transition?
Speaker 2:It's a great question. I do think that I think there's probably always going to be a one-off or someone who has a legitimate reason as to why they can't be. But outside of that, I think a lot of it is. There are myths, I think, around going to the cloud. Right, there's the concern that it's not as secure or that you're sharing a public cloud and your data is going to be out there. If you go, do even a little bit of research, that's going to get this proven pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:And what the cloud does for SMB specifically is it gives you an unbelievable amount of agility in your business. It allows you to expand into new lines of business. It allows you to expand your investments into whether it's creating or using new applications, and that's your competitive advantage as an SMB. Is your agility right? You're able to pivot or grow your business faster than a larger enterprise would be because there's less people and you have you know you don't have all these other investments and you know it takes a while to turn a big ship. So that gives you you're just magnifying that competitive advantage you have when you go to the cloud. It also, contrary to the belief that it's less secure, allows you to be more secure.
Speaker 2:I always use the castle example for security. If you think of, hey, my business is a castle and you have this, the firewall is the moat, right, it is the. Hey, this was the first thing. The best thing for a long time was we're going to put a wall around all of our resources. Threats have gotten so far beyond that, and the cloud allows you to have that agility. Something like SASE allows you to pivot resources or rededicate resources to the areas of business that you need from a security perspective. If you have hybrid or remote employees, you can have multi-factor authentication. You can have DNS security with Umbrella or whoever you use for it, and all of that kind of runs in the background and isn't obtrusive to your employees, but it's something that allows you to quickly shift how your employees are working without ever having to think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as a SMB business ourselves who live on the cloud, who built everything on the cloud, I fully agree with you. Well, ian, before I let you go, I have one last question. We always end our podcast by asking our guests to nominate the next guest on the podcast. Who do you think we should have next?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I'm going to nominate Andrew Sage. Yeah, I think I'm going to nominate Andrew Sage, who I love. I think one of the smartest people I know. I've had the pleasure of talking with him several times. So he leads. He's the vice president of our global partner in distribution sales business here at Cisco. He used to be over SMB. Obviously, distribution and partner is what we're here talking about, so I can't think of anyone better to come on next.
Speaker 1:Well, Andrew, we're coming for you. And Ian, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:For sure. Thank you F, I appreciate it.