Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Heather Harlos - Meet the Partner Where They Are
Heather Harlos, Global Programs Enablement & Go-to-Market Leader at Proofpoint, joins Partnerships Unraveled to break down the strategies that truly empower partners and remove friction from the sales process.
In this episode, Heather shares why Proofpoint made the uncommon decision to position its channel programs under sales instead of marketing and why it’s paying off. She and Alex dive into the critical role of marketplaces in partner enablement, the balancing act of making marketplaces partner-inclusive, and how AI and automation are shaping the future of channel strategy.
Key takeaways include:
- The shift from traditional channel tiers to behavior-based partner incentives
- How Proofpoint is enabling partners to sell and implement solutions without vendor involvement
- Lessons from consumer marketing that can transform SMB channel strategies
- Why friction is the #1 killer of partner-driven revenue and how to eliminate it
If you're looking to build a high-impact, partner-led channel program, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss.
Connect with Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherharlos/
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, heather. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm doing great. How about you?
Speaker 2:Well, we just spent the last 10 minutes talking about music, so I'm in a great mood, which is the perfect segue to now talk about channels. Maybe if the uninitiated you could give us a little bit of an introduction about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Heather Harlows, I work with Proofpoint. I lead our global programs enablement and, most recently, go-to-market strategies for our cloud marketplaces.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I think you're familiar with what Proofpoint does as a business and also very familiar with your roots of market. I think you guys have a really interesting channel, so excited to get into that today. One of the things that I find interesting is maybe a bit of a sort of organizational piece or orchestration. Orchestration piece is proof points, channel programs under sales rather than marketing, which is uncommon. How do you see that changing sort of your structure, your initiatives, your strategy?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually think it's a smarter place, quite honestly, to put programs because by sitting under sales you get a closer glimpse of the actual impact to the customers, to the sales numbers. And the strategies that you're building are less around marketing, which is getting people to click, getting people to take action in a certain way, and built more around how to drive behaviors that actually lead to growth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know I get very frustrated, maybe because I am a revenue leader, but I get very frustrated when it's not that everyone should report into sales, because that would definitely also cause chaos. But we yeah, that would be a nightmare. But we do have to understand that we are a customer business right?
Speaker 2:Exactly would be a nightmare, but we do have to understand that we are a customer business right, and so whether you're marketing sales tech, all of it, it has to be towards the goal, ultimately, of generating the outcome that we all need. So, to me, programs falling under that and having that more direct view of the impact you have, I can imagine that helps form your strategy.
Speaker 1:A thousand percent, and it also makes the program's team have more direct contact with the partners that we're actually building this for, because sometimes when you're in marketing and trying to do it, you're a little bit of a middleman and you don't have a direct connection to the partners that you're actually trying to help. So by being in that organization you get direct feedback. They actually are the ones that help us build our programs now, versus building something and hoping they like it and adjusting it later. It's built for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, an old mentor of mine is something I sort of now steal and tell my team like I came up with it, but the customer always has the answer. I think so often we sort of credit business leaders with being really really smart and oh my, how did they spot this thing in the market? They're so clever and so often and as a benefit of this podcast I just sit down with people and I'm like, oh my God, that's such a good idea. And they're like, yeah, partner came up with it. And you're like, oh, so your job is really just to hear feedback and implement effectively and from there greatness happens, exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, I think that is what the actual intelligence is is the ability to listen and act. Yeah, not to come up with the idea on your own.
Speaker 2:There we go. I think one of the things that I know is a core goal for how you're building your program is to get partners to work autonomously. I think the whole goal of the channel is to generate sort of hyperscale, and the only way you can generate that hyperscale is by getting partners to be independent but working sort of in the direction that you need them to. What are the sort of specific strategies or incentives have you built to sort of encourage that behavior?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the first thing we had to do was figure out how do we allow them to quote seamlessly, like that's step one really is can they actually go and position and sell something and actually generate an order without talking to us? If you don't have that, they don't have the tools they need to actually move fast enough. So that was step one. We started opening up API connections with our various distributors going on marketplaces, including Ingram's Exvanage Marketplace, where they can actually go run the sale beginning to end. Now the next piece of that is giving them the training and the ability to actually deliver those. So we launched something called our Certified Delivery Program, which now we can certify our partners and go okay, now you have the training, you have the tools. Not only can you sell it, but you can actually do the implementation and manage services.
Speaker 1:After the fact and from a partner's perspective, we know most of their money that they make, the largest margins, come from their services, not from selling our services. So that was a huge piece. And then on the front end of that is do you have the right curriculum, training and incentives to actually get them to do that training, to know how to do that pre-sales sales motion in the beginning. But doing the pre-sales and the sales without having those last two pieces is almost a little bit done in vain because they can't execute on what you're training them for. Almost a little bit done in vain because they can't execute on what you're training them for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, uh, it's. It's become one of my mantras on the podcast is meet the partner where they are. And I think so often, um, I don't know why this happens Maybe you have a good answer but so often we sort of build programs and strategies from a perspective of where we are, which is much easier for us if we did this thing, and then by the time you get to the partner, they go well, that's just wildly unhelpful, right? So it sounds like building the right strategy, tooling, training to really get to the granular focus of like, okay, the partner actually cares around their service wraparound, so how do we build a strategy that enables that to happen more easily and more succinctly? Talk to me about how that philosophy and sort of. Do you agree with that philosophy and do you see the mistakes that so often vendors make?
Speaker 1:A thousand percent and I've worked for companies that have made those mistakes before and with companies that have made those mistakes before. I think it all starts from the senior leadership and the understanding that to make things easy for a partner doesn't always mean it's easy for you. And you have to have that commitment that we're willing to do the extra pieces, the extra development, the extra work to make their lives easier, even if ours are temporarily a little bit harder. It's not easy to move to that motion and if somebody thinks it is, I think they're setting themselves up for failure. So you need that sort of top down understanding that hey, it's going to hurt, but when we get here, then ultimately it's easier for all of us. But it isn't easy in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I think you know, if you just zoom all the way out the stuff, that's easy for the vendor and the partner every channel program has and so it's not a competitive differentiator right, because it's really easy to get to those decisions. I think, setting the right culture and setting the right strategy to go hey, we're willing to put up with some pain because it's the right thing to do that. That takes guts and it takes commitment and it takes drive to enact, but you can really understand that once you get through the pain barrier now you've created a competitive differentiator. I talk a lot on this podcast around the. You know the, the three p's a product program and personnel product, lots of products, really, really great program. I think that's really the secret source to create the differentiator. And then obviously it's how great are the people that you work with and how are they taking that message to market?
Speaker 1:A thousand percent, and I think what a lot of programs teams miss is understanding the number of departments it takes to be successful. They build things, but maybe they didn't work with the teams that they actually need to execute on it. Or they have great ideas but they don't have buy-in from the supporting departments to put it into action. So it's super important to make sure you build those relationships and you have their belief in you as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny, almost from a program perspective, when we talk about the customer has the answer. You've got lots of customers. Some of those even work within your own organization. It's so important to canvas that feedback. One of the things, I think, that makes your life complicated, heather, is Proofpoint traditionally has an enterprise go-to-market, but it's now focusing on heading down market and scaling within the SMB. What's been some of the biggest challenges around building a channel strategy aimed at that new segment?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the challenges are primarily internal. You have to teach people what it means to work in this market. It's a different pricing strategy. It's a different marketing strategy. It's a different marketing strategy. It's different functionality that an SMB customer is looking for than an enterprise customer. So you actually have to repackage, redesign everything that you're doing and recost it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I. Sometimes we obviously both in my guys as vp of revenue, but also interviewing lots of executives.
Speaker 2:I'll hear people heading down market and I'll sort of ask them hey, what's your strategy, how are you implementing this? And then when I hear what they're doing, I'm like, oh, you're trying to build an enterprise go-to-market, but you're just doing it with more people, yeah, and you just very quickly see that the unit economics just fundamentally don't work the same way, right, and so having that digital strategy is so important. I think the story I always wrap around that is, if we sort of look at the spectrum between enterprise marketing and consumer marketing, which is all the marketing that you can ever do, we sort of treat SMB like a watered down version of enterprise marketing, which I always think is quite strange because it's much closer to consumer style marketing, because we're touching so many people. So when they go, oh yeah, I'm asking them to fill in this form to register for this webinar, and I'm like that's never happening, like it just can't get. That friction is so much that at scale it's so hard to manage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that, yeah, and I think there's a belief that you just hire more people to talk to more accounts. You'll never make money in the SMB space that way at all, so you have to almost think about it. Or how we all shop on Amazon or whatever that is. They need to have it all at their fingertips, just in time with the information they need to make a decision.
Speaker 2:Correct. I mean, it's exactly the same way you build a consumer business. I had a podcast recently I'd love to get your thoughts here and we were talking about the fact and they're sort of senior executives within channel organization, which is great because I love distribution, but I think the thing that I'm like, but that means we all have the same ideas, whereas if you've come from that consumer world and you, I imagine you'd build a very different SMB channel because you would come at it from the same way that an Amazon comes at it where they go. Well, I don't have reps calling end users going, hey, when do you want your delivery slot? Right, we automate everything because that's the way to deal with consumer and I think there's a lot to learn from the consumer space and pulling that into the SMB channel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of my first actually it was in distribution. One of my first jobs in distribution was a digital strategist at ScanSource and they had a. I think most of their digital strategy and this is across the board is very one way you come here. You can click here, you can click here. There was no automation around. If they do this, what are they more than likely going to need next? So one of the first major projects I worked on was actually heat mapping the website and then building automation based off of where they're going so we could show them the most likely thing that they would be interested in immediately. And when you start thinking about it that way, your sales are going to go up. But it's not because you're necessarily doing anything different from a sales motion. It's because you're getting them the information they actually want and need faster so they can make a decision quicker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the other bit that I think and it's so applicable to both channels, but also a consumer is friction kills all deals, right. The reason that Apple Pay is such a wonderful invention is because it removes all the friction required to enter a bank card, which mathematically drives up revenue, like it's provable that if you can minimize the steps between viewing a product and purchasing a product, revenue improves. And I sort of think the same thing is so true of program design. When I sort of hear, oh, here's the requirements that they need to register and then they need to do these 17 different certifications, I'm like you're not getting anywhere at the level of speed and efficiency and scale that you would like to get to.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So you took on marketplace strategy as a part of your role at Proofpoint. What was your first priority when stepping into this space?
Speaker 1:part of your role at Proofpoint. What was your first priority when stepping into this space? Part of it was understanding how one how it works. I mean, it is a complex beast when you actually start looking at the marketplaces how are things paid, how are things ordered and we're in the very early stages of that. So our first one we went live with was Amazon Marketplace. We're on the Xvantage Marketplace and hopefully by the end of this year we'll be on the Azure Marketplace as well.
Speaker 1:But really understanding that model and where it fits within the sales process, I think is really really important. But also there's a little bit of, I would say, frenemies between channel and marketplaces. You could easily make your marketplace a thing that could hurt your partners, and the marketplace, in my personal opinion, is never going to bring you as much as the channel community. So you have to figure out how do you build a program around it that not only enables this from a transactional standpoint but also, at the same time, protects your partners and brings them along for the ride and, if they can't go, protects them in that transactional process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sort of fascinated by how, you know brands like AWS, google, microsoft are changing the behavior within the channel, because I think there is a play with play against sort of strategy there where you can sort of understand that, oh, these marketplaces are going to be really helpful in this area. But I know people within distribution also sat there going, huh, they do a lot of the things that we do and care about, and suddenly we have to be part locators and revenue and finance flow, finance flow. And so I'm sort of really interested to see where you think that market is headed and what some of the advice that you would give to the channel players out there to best work and make sure that it's more friend than enemy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the first thing is having very deliberate rules of engagement between the channel and the marketplace, if a partner is with it or if a distributor is with it. I mean, there are options for distribution like DSOR with AWS, so there is no reason to cut out a channel partner just because somebody wants to leverage their EDP dollars, for example. Right, they can still do that and do that with the partner. So I think the most important thing is that you build it in a way that those partners are able to come along with you on that journey.
Speaker 1:Now, long-term, I don't think our partners, our MSPs, our GSIs, our resellers they will be there with us. They are the experts, they're the consultants, they're the ones that the customer trusts. They trust them more than they do us, in my opinion, because they see the full picture of their ecosystem and are actually helping them build solutions. We're providing a solution, but it's a piece of a greater solution. We're providing a solution, but it's a piece of a greater solution. So I think they will always be there and if you want to be successful as a vendor, you need to protect those guys, because they're your greatest assets, they're your biggest sales force From a distribution standpoint. I think it's actually distribution is trying to figure out right now.
Speaker 2:How do I play with them in a way that I don't become irrelevant, correct? And and I've sort of had the same answer to this, because I, you know, I've heard about the death of distribution now for 15 years almost, I think, and my answer is always really simple is well, how much value are you providing?
Speaker 2:exactly, and if the answer is not that much I'm like well, then you might have Exactly. And if the answer is not that much I'm like well, then you might have a problem. But the partner is critical. We've seen AWS hard innovate their strategy to go oh, we also need to be partner, inclusive now, even sometimes partner first, because they understand that partners are critical to getting every deal from enterprise down to SMB solved. And the question then I sort of have to everyone else is okay, if AWS, who are able to go direct in every sort of territory in the world and yet they don't, that's because partners are critical. How are you helping partners and I think that's the role for distribution, is the role for ISVs to understand. Our function is also to help partners be successful, because the people who want to work with partners are the end customers.
Speaker 1:A thousand percent and I think the distributors that are understanding that are doing a good job around offering additional services that an AWS never will, offering additional services that an AWS never will. Maybe they're building out a complete services team that can augment the partner services, so they actually are an extension of the team. They are working with governments and holding government contracts on behalf of the vendors like us and the partners, so that they can just go to this one spot. They don't have to have a contracting team, a grant writer, fill in the blank. The distributor still can do those functions and it keeps them relevant. I think the ones that aren't thinking ahead that way are going to be the ones that may be in trouble in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the pet projects that I have is trying to educate the market that I think the number one sort of blocker for MSP success is MSPs are technically led businesses, I think is the right way to say this.
Speaker 2:They're engineering-led businesses in the most part, which means generating demand and closing deals is not their sweet spot. It's service delivery, it's great customer expectations, it's great management of service and product. What's not great is generating demand, and I think the faster brands can understand. Oh, our job is to help partners generate demand and close deals more, and if we do that, they will be wildly more successful. I know you also spend a lot of time building programs and tools to help partners generate more demand and be more successful. Talk to me about how you envision that and what are sort of the things that people in your position should be looking at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the first thing is understanding what somebody does in their day-to-day life. Again, you said meet them where they are. We should be building marketing campaigns and tools that they can leverage in the mediums they're already using. They shouldn't have to go and do something different. So there was actually a book that I read that talked about your circle of influence, and I don't know if you've ever read that. But essentially, if you look at social media, you know you have this circle. This circle has an outer circle. So if you do something that actually is interesting and post it, one action that takes a minute sometimes less could reach thousands of people, sometimes less could reach thousands of people. So I think if you build things with that in mind that they can easily copy, click, post, add a quick one-liner that's their flavor on it they're going to leverage those. But then if you do it in a way that's relevant, other people are going to find it interesting too.
Speaker 1:And when I was actually at JumpCloud, we were very fortunate in the timing are going to find it interesting too. And when I was actually at JumpCloud, we were very fortunate in the timing, but we were getting ready to launch this big campaign when the first season of Wheel of Time came out and we're in the tech space. We know that our audiences are just as big of a nerd as I am and love that stuff. So we did an entire campaign around Wheel of Time before it actually launched and all of our partners shared it and that was the number one campaign they had ever done in their history. But it was because we took a relevant topic that was a little bit viral and nobody knew what it was really going to be. But people were like, oh, that's interesting and they started sharing it and they started sharing it and then that drove a ton of demand for the MSPs that we were working with. That came back to them. But again, it was one thing that took a minute that they could do, that they are already doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think again, this is a sort of amalgamation of meet the partner where they are but also lead them to where they need to get to.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:It's so easy to get happy ears and speak to an MSP about new certification and, hey, come, do more product testing, because the answer will be, yeah, love to yeah, right, but that doesn't.
Speaker 1:They love badges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that doesn't actually help them get to where they need to get to. And when we talk about circle of influence, we've got great data at Channext in terms of the revenue opportunity available to most MSPs is upsell, cross-sell. Yeah, while everyone gets very excited about new logo, acquisition for most vendors Proofpoint I'm sure will be included is actually, if the average msp has 40 customers and each one has 50 seats, we might be touching 20 to 30 percent of that. So why are we worried about new logo when this msp has? We can triple the revenue by simply just helping that partner understand how to attach more, how to upsell more, how to cross sell more Yep, a thousand percent Completely agree.
Speaker 2:Maybe pivoting ahead slightly, what do you think is coming down the line in terms of partner programs evolving, changing over the next few years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we've seen a lot of it and one of the reasons I was brought on to Proofpoint was to do this, but moving away from the precious metals, the gems, the fill in the whatever you want model and simplifying it.
Speaker 1:So if you're going to have tears, no more than two Like that's enough. Now, where I think the real future is going, it's going to be a behavior action-based program where it's built almost like an incentive structure would be, where you unlock benefits based off of what you're actually doing, so pre-sales activities, during the sales cycle activities, and post-sales activities, and then even on the retention side, you actually get points for each one of those boxes that you check and those points will unlock MDF dollars, they'll give you expanded discounts, they'll give you other things and what I think is really cool about that model and I did something like this for Red Hat when I was in distribution but you can drive non-sales driven or non-sales specific behavior that will actually drive more sales later. So you don't just look at here's what the revenue is, here's the trainings you've done, here's I don't know how many deal registrations you have. You actually look at the activities that are most likely to increase those habits and you can incentivize them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I completely agree, and I think the one word that you didn't say that I know everyone's screaming which is where is AI going to come to play?
Speaker 2:But I think that data management and data understanding of, rather than you know, metal status and we're going to do this much revenue and this many certifications, and now we're silver, aren't we great? It is going to be that cause and effect right, which is, hey, I did this quote and we've currently sold this product in there, and so I should attach this product and how AI is able to understand and present information at the right time to an engineer or to a sales rep. I really see that as the next evolution, because if I was dealing with you one-on-one and we forgot all the programs and I was just giving you advice, I'd be like talk to me about where you are today, what you're trying to do tomorrow. Here's the information that you'll need to make that successful. Ai is obviously being able to replicate our sort of thought, processes and understanding, and I think that's really going to be that next evolution of where I think programs will head.
Speaker 1:A thousand percent, and I also think it'll give you insights into what successful people are doing, so you can look at somebody that's been successful and go oh well, we're telling them to do this over here just because the program says it, but they're actually doing this thing yeah and this is the trend, so you'll actually be able to give a more guided journey to success, with the data and intelligence to back it up.
Speaker 2:Oh, very good one. Well, looking slightly further into the future, for this podcast I like to be nice and lazy, or maybe super efficient. We always ask our current guests to recommend our next guest. Who did you have in mind?
Speaker 1:recommend our next guest. Who did you have in mind? Yeah, 1000 percent richard tallman. He is somebody who I love personally, but it's just an amazing channel leader and you won't find a better person awesome, richard.
Speaker 2:We're coming for you. Heather, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge today yeah, happy to thank you for having me.