Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Patricia Cabrera Perez - Why Marketing is Becoming the Frontline of Channel Success
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we dive deep into the evolving world of distribution and partner strategy with Patrícia Cabrera Perez, Head of Distribution for EMEA at Gigamon. With over two decades of experience spanning LATAM and EMEA, Patrícia brings a unique, heartfelt perspective on the power of channel partnerships, grounded in trust, strategy, and adaptability.
We explore her journey from sending POs via fax machines in Mexico City to orchestrating large-scale channel strategies across Europe. Patrícia shares her insights into the delicate balance between partner volume and value, the frameworks she uses to drive growth, and the art of fostering agility within massive partner ecosystems.
This episode also tackles the rising influence of marketing in distribution, how data and personalization are redefining partner engagement, and why demand generation is the often-overlooked metric every channel leader should obsess over. To round it out, Patrícia opens up about the transformative power of mentorship, both received and given and why leading by example can ripple across an entire ecosystem.
Whether you're a channel veteran or new to the space, this conversation offers strategic depth, personal warmth, and real-world lessons for anyone looking to scale partnerships with purpose.
Connect with Patricia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-cabrera-perez-80960030/
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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 Chanix and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, thrutia. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Very good, thank you. How are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. I often joke on this podcast that about 60% of the guests are born in distribution, because distribution seems to be, I think, the best place to really understand all the minutiae and complexities of the channel, and this can't be more true of you as well. So maybe, for the uninitiated, you can give us a little bit of a rundown of who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Sure. So you know I'm the head of distribution at Gigamon for EMEA, but I've been working in this industry for probably around 23 years, having different roles right? I started exactly in a distributor in Mexico City and within different roles right? I started exactly in a distributor in Mexico City and within different roles I have worked at vendors. At some point I wanted to explore the field. So also wasn't direct sales. But you know, through my career and experiences and people that I have been blessed to work with, I definitely identified that my heart is within the channel, within the partner ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Yes, awesome. Now, one of the things that I love one about the channel in general, but two certainly about the podcast is people have an opportunity to build relationships with people from everywhere. It's a global ecosystem, it's a global go-to-market. Nothing can be more true, because you quite literally come from Mexico all the way through to EMEA leadership. That's one hell of a journey. Talk to me about some of the highlights in that sort of journey from junior to senior, from LATAM to Europe as well. How did that all go? Sure to senior, from LATAM to Europe as well. How did that all go?
Speaker 1:Sure. So you know, when I graduated from uni, my very first job, as I mentioned, was at a distributor right in Mexico City and I was managing the relationship with Citrix at that time in what was now Wescon in Mexico City. At that time it was a distributor called FINA and that's really where I started to understand the value of partnerships, of trust, of customer service. That really makes a difference, I guess, in any industry and this is well, knowing that you can have different vendors selling similar technologies and obviously sometimes different, um, you know, distributors also also selling, selling the same product. So that was a probably my first, my first big step of learning what, what was this world? And you know it, just it, just the. Our purchase orders at that time were sent through a fax machine. So you can see that I I have witnessed the evolution of channel distribution because that's how I started. Then I learned what it was to work in a DST and I think the natural step is also then jumping to a vendor, and I worked at SAP also for quite a few years being a channel manager and that was again the next step where it allowed me to taste different flavors of this industry. Number one is how a vendor can really influence the market in terms of what are the programs, what are the initiatives you drive that can facilitate the adoption and the penetration of that market, but also a little bit of what was that regional experience? Because I started to deal with resellers that had presence not just in Mexico City and I started to see those different nuances that you need to consider and need to be aware to close business. And I also had the opportunity to work with my first worldwide leader. It was a very smart gentleman based in Europe, where it opened a little bit more my eyes of all the things that you do need to consider, not just when you do business but you build a strategy how to communicate with HQ and with corporate to really leverage all those relationships and that exposure that can help you to open your doors for your next step in your career.
Speaker 1:And when I was working with the channels, it also allowed me to engage directly with end customers. Then when you just start to think like, hey, I just want to see what it's really to be in the field, what it really takes to get an end customer contract, and that's when I made a decision to work for SAS, a business intelligence company and I was an account director for the name accounts for banking and insurance and you understand really the complexity of what it takes. You know all the different personas you have to engage, how to position the technology, what is a commercial strategy that have to be when you have to bring your executive sponsorships to, at the end of the day, align all the points to get that contract signed and that purchase ordered. So having those kind of three different flavors of a distributor, of a vendor and field sales. I said you know I experienced it working with channel because you have to involve with all the different parties, set up your strategies, the network, the trust, et cetera that you need to drive to achieve your goals right.
Speaker 1:And then for personal decision, because of the family, we moved to Europe, we moved to England and that's going to be 13 years ago. We moved to England and that's going to be 13 years ago. And you know, without knowing anybody and I was extremely blessed that I found a job very quickly in the industry that I've been working already for a while as a pan-European distribution account manager and that's really where my European experience started, awesome.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I find so interesting, um, channel strategy I obviously love. I quite literally have a podcast about it um, but one of the things I think is the most interesting area of that discussion is in distribution, because you're balancing, uh, volume of partners with selectivity of partners, building that ecosystem. Um, and I think maybe, slightly philosophically, people are either volume people or value people, by nature, right, and uh, everything from how do you buy christmas presents, is it by quantity, or you find a perfect gift, right? I think it's quite a personal thing, but that's not really how strategy is built. So talk to me, how do you balance growth between adding a large volume of partners and also selecting the right partners? That's a balancing act. How do you sort of deem where that balancing point is?
Speaker 1:I think it also your partner's strategy and you go to market would really, depending of the company you are right If you're just a startup or if you're a really more mature vendor. I think being that selective is quite interesting, right, who are the right partners to work with? And that will help you to scale to where you want to get. And, as you will mention, it's a balancing act, right, it's an art that it takes time to master and, especially when you want to drive a really effective and consistent partner network, I personally use a framework that can help me to drive that by balance, and one is just always you have to clear what your goal will be, what are those growth objectives that you want to achieve and, based on that, who do you think will be those right players, who are those right partners? That will help you and you can define that partner profile.
Speaker 1:And I think one of the values that we have today with distributors, but also within our own data, is leverage those insights that now information can give us. Right, we can drive all those. All these models can give us really a more accurate list of who we need to engage with to get to those growth objectives and then set up your journey of that strategy. What are those KPIs that you want to achieve? Right. How you need to communicate with it. What is the enablement that you have to do internally, within your people, but also with those partners that you want to work with, and then just, you need to communicate with it.
Speaker 1:What is the enablement that you have to do internally, within your people, but also with those partners that you want to, that you want to work with um, and then, just, you need to be in a continue review um status, right. So you have to see, okay, what had it started, what is giving me the results, why I need to pause because I could be maybe going too fast. What I do also need to stop, but what is most important is also to leverage the Disney knowledge. I think as vendors, we can sometimes seem to say this is what I want, this is what I think it is right. But as they do have a wider view and I believe they collaborate with other vendors, the insight and the feedback that they can give you is it will make your strategy way much more complete. So I think this approach enables us, as vendors, to expand really our reach and foster partnerships that can deliver value for all the partners involved.
Speaker 2:Awesome and I think one of the things there is you've got your sort of activation and growth strategy, both in terms of volume of partners and value of partners, and the real value of the channel is that, hey look, we might have a channel that's tens of thousands, sometimes even hundreds of thousands, of partners, which is the level of scale required for you to be that multi-billion dollar revenue per quarter company. The challenge with that is Having that many partners. Agility is not typically the word that I'd use, but you know, often, especially in the instances of, say, a new product introduction, agility is almost mandated and required. And yet you've got to have agility with scale. Talk to me about how you drive agility into your channel when you do have that very wide scale, when you do have that very wide scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think some of the challenges that we can face is you know how demand evolves, right, the customer demand. I think in lately, the last few years, we have seen how it fluctuates, so we definitely need to adapt to it. You know, one example could be some government requirements that some certain verticals now need to it. One example could be some government requirements that some certain verticals now need to follow. So it's just how we vendors need to adapt our messaging or our technologies to help them to be compliant from some perspective. The other one of the challenges we see is the communication gaps we can have where sometimes the expectations can be misaligned because, again, that poor communication or that assumption between vendors and distributors that can lead into delays of execution and not having very efficient results. And I would say that the third one could be also the technology integration. Sometimes legacy of way of doing business or systems can be like the impact of collaboration and the decision making. So some of the strategies that I would like to apply to some work streams to drive that scalability and to drive faster results. One is just super simple. It's just like communication you cannot communicate enough. Try to be as clear as possible and open as possible to make sure that you avoid those misunderstandings. Number two is being this constant review of how the metrics are doing, review the performance and just identify what we need to repeat again or what we need to improve. Another one is what are those technologies that we can adopt? Ai is one of them. Right, at some point we start with IoT, so it can help us to drive that efficiency from an operational perspective and also from a visibility point of view.
Speaker 1:And the one that I think is very, very aligned with that communication piece is that collaborative approach in terms of the planning. It's just how do we build together that business plan that makes them have this sense of belonging and also make sure that they have this accountability from both sides to be driving these aligned goals from all the different parts involved. And then I guess the cherry on the cake is the incentives, right? A good salespeople like to be, you know you'd like to be paid so, and having so many vendors nowadays and having so many channel programs, they're just like what, what is?
Speaker 1:What is the next thing? To make it? To make it fun, it's just, it just. And to make them competitive, to be the top of the list, and that could be rewards in many ways, shapes and forms right, that could be with incentives, that could be with speeds um, you name it. So that's that. That's the way that can help me to navigate those challenges, to build um agile partnerships, um with with the distributors we often uh talk on this uh podcast about the three p's, um, which is product, program and personnel.
Speaker 2:Uh, for me, I think, so many brands, they talk about their products as their key differentiator in the channel and while I think that can be true, often, as you say, that's not really why most partners are going to sell your great product or your competitors also pretty great product. It's program differences, right. It's the incentive structures, the back-end rebate. It's hey, the marketing support's really awesome, whatever the program differentiators. And then the last bit is obviously personnel. Right, how are your channel team? Are they a joy to deal with? Are they really horrible?
Speaker 2:Those are the things that I think move the needle a lot more than, hey, our button is blue or green or really snazzy. So it's great to hear you touching on, I think, real program differences that can drive massive agility changes, because sometimes time to market is the difference between your end-of-year results being through the roof or actually a failure. Right, it's not really how you finish the year, it's how you start the year, and if that start is two or three months slower than you're expecting, you're all, you're almost on the back foot for the whole year yeah, and, and it just, it just also, depending on your technology, the, the cell cycle, right as you name it, it's just like a kind of a mid to long-term cell cycle.
Speaker 1:Just four weeks can make a massive difference if you close it in the year or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. So I am a bit of an evangelist around. Channel leaders are often very similar. They have been hired from the same jobs. They have been hired from the same backgrounds. Although love distribution, that's obviously great and often I think it leads to the same ideas in terms of how we build channels, and getting new ideas into how we build channels I think is a really great structure for building more innovative channels. I think one of the key things that I see is channel leaders are almost always sales people and I think that can present a weakness because I think marketing-led channel growth, especially as we head down market into the SMB consumer sales is all led by marketing right? The chat I always say is I've never spoken to an Apple salesperson in my life, but I bought basically every Apple product in the world. It has nothing to do with their sales team, has everything to do with their marketing team. How do you see marketing shaping the future of distribution and partner engagement?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think it's taking a more pivotal role in the way we shape the future of the way we work with partners, how the partners engage with the end customers and, I believe, with how we drive that brand awareness and demand generation with distributors right, and I think an important piece we need to have in mind is those partner experiences. They have to be personalized and, again, we should take advantage of leveraging the data because they can give us some insight to create more tailored marketing programs that could be very impactful to the individual, allowing us to go deeper into those relationships that hopefully will encourage, you know, loyalty and feel that the partner understood and appreciated. The other one is the content right. I think the selling sometimes can become really complex. We can take a look at the personas that we are engaging, so the content has to be of high quality and really targeted based on the conversation that you're having. You know you said it before we're not talking about my product, my bits and bytes, right. It just we focus, I think, now more days in terms of those use cases. What am I going to do to solve that need that you have today, not just for the today, but the tomorrow, and we can use that in all the different paths that we use marketing right. One example could be webinars, which at the same time it helps us to educate and empower our partners. And also marketing is helping us vendors to build that trust and that credibility within the partner ecosystem. When you go with a use case, when you go with a win of a company that everybody knows, I believe you do have a more credible story to sell.
Speaker 1:The other point that I see in marketing evolving is that digital first engagement.
Speaker 1:We're seeing it from you know it's helping us to connect with partners through social media to email when we do business development activities and also virtual events and being more successful in driving campaigns where it can help us to cover a wider breadth. So these platforms that we have today that allow us to have that real-time communication and collaboration definitely is a plus for us as a vendor. And I'm starting to see now I don't know if in your conversations that you have with other leaders as well is part of that evolution of distributors is they're taking it to the next level to also start to do activities, to do end-user lead generation, where they are helping the partners directly to generate that demand. So they do lead generation and they share it with us as vendors. So they are driving those leads and facilitating the way they share it for the partners to really maximize the benefits that our vendor programs, um, are offering to them. So this definitely is helping them to boost the partner cell and and drive closer that collaborative approach that all the partners want to drive 100%.
Speaker 2:And to me it's really funny One of the questions you know less on the podcast, but maybe more in my role as a sales leader. I'll sit down with a channel executive and I'll often ask them look, what's the metric that you wish you could turn up? Right, if we turn one metric up to 99, what would it be? And the answer I never get, which I'm always surprised. And when I sort of bring it up, they go well, yeah, obviously that one.
Speaker 2:It's actually demand, because everything else, like the channel, is built to service customers, right, how do we recruit, activate, enable, brilliant, and how do we market to partners to train them really well, so they can take the message out? And so I'll often hear like, oh, we want to reduce time to value, or we want our partner activation rate or our monthly transactive partners to grow, yeah, great. But it can all be solved by demand, which is, if demand goes through the roof and this I learned this lesson extremely well because I was at zoom through covid the rest of the channel just sorts itself out because all the partners want to work with you, because demand is so high. And so, exactly to your point. I think the smart channel leaders are understanding that our job is to help create demand. Now, there are various avenues depending on what type of business you are to do that, but that's the one metric that I think every channel leader should be triple focused on. How do we drive that really through the roof?
Speaker 1:It's a win-win for everybody, right? If you want to go with partner recruitment or making your technology strategy to some partners or reactivate some partners, what is the best? It just there's opportunities that we can drive together, right?
Speaker 2:so yeah, yeah, and the other one you know I've I've spent so long um recruiting partners for various uh things, and the amount of time I've spent sort of evangelizing, you know, with the flashy deck and here's the program benefits, and aren't I wonderful to deal with and everything. And then you have one customer who says, hey, I'd like to buy it. And suddenly they're like, yes, yes, I'd love to, I'd love to get involved, and and so you know the the dog. The dog wags the tail, not the tail wags the dog.
Speaker 2:And ultimately, if the customers are there asking for your brand, you're in a great place that's it so this is sort of, I think you are my perfect podcast guest, because we talked about distribution, we've talked about marketing strategy and now we're going to talk about my last sort of passion when it comes to this market, which is mentorship. Um, I have benefited massively from, uh, people giving me jobs that I was probably not ready or too junior for, but mentors took a real bet on me and I know it's something that has really positively influenced your career and something you are still passionate about today. Talk to me about why mentorship matters and how you enact mentorship today.
Speaker 1:so I I think we can talk about the mentorship in any stage of your life. Right, it could be. Obviously we're focusing here from a professional career, but if we just also take it from a personal, you know, we just always like to have people that have more experience than us and that are willing to, you know, to keep you on your toes or to maximize your potential, and you know, I would like to say that my very first mentor was my mother. But if we focus it on a professional career, it is just great to see that people that will see that, what that is special in you, and to try to push you out of your comfort zone and to come and officially build that mentor and mentee relationship to say, hey, I know you have the capabilities, you know would you like to invest? This is what's the goal that you would like to do that there is a mutual commitment to do the investment right of times and what it takes together. And I was very lucky that you know, within the first mentors that I had, you know you kind of also opened the door to continue your mentorship with with different, with different people. So you extend your network, they expose you, they give you the platform and you also can learn from people that are not directly linked with what you normally do on a daily basis. And I think, if you're smart enough, you, you know you'd really take advantage of them, because you never know, as you said, they might offer you your next job tomorrow, or, you know, you might meet your wife or your husband, or you know, you don't you don't know what's what's around the corner, but definitely it is inspiring because you do see that at least the people that I've been mentored by, they lead by example and they allow me to continue to develop that strength to not doubt about myself, right, and you know, I've always said I'm a world specimen, right, myself. Right, and you know I've always said I'm a world specimen, right, how many mexicans, uh, do you see europe having, you know, been working this industry for such a long time? Um, with the role that I do have today, I personally have never met one, and it just happens also being a female talent, right? Um, so, so I just find myself very lucky because of what I was, what I was taught at home, but also because of the I was taught at home, but also because of the opportunities that have been presented to me, but I have not let them go. I have grabbed them and made the most of them. So I know what the difference that can make by one people leading by example.
Speaker 1:Second, by people, you know, offering their hand for other people to you know, for the next generations, to make it easier, to make sure that you know there are things that sometimes we know are not okay, there are certain behaviors that are not okay, and give you the capabilities to speak up when it's needed, because some people may have that lack of awareness on certain things, and just make sure that you know it is okay to speak up and then, by learning through that process, you know as sure that you know it is okay to speak up, but, um, and then by learning through that process, you know, as you. You know, one of my mentors suffered me one of my previous jobs. Right until today she's one of my best friends, um, because we have the level of that close relationship. She's not my boss anymore today, but we just, we just, we just keep in touch.
Speaker 1:And then I also, in a previous job, I proposed to have younger mentees and I have mentored young individuals as well, and when you see them how they blossom and you see them. What a big influence you have seen and what they have accomplished just by spending some time with them. It's just quite gratifying. So, you know, for any channel leader or for any person in a position that can do it, I would like to ask everybody one to lead by example. Number two to you know, to offer that hand for the younger generations. And number three also to push ourselves to never stop learning, because you know, it doesn't matter to what level you get, you always can keep growing, you can always challenge yourself and people keep your toes. So definitely it makes a difference to be part of something like that, but also to offer it to someone else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think I could have said it much, much better myself. My career has. You know, I'm very fortunate I've had an extremely quick progression, but it is really down to people unlocking doors that probably should have been locked to me and one of the pieces of maybe more like how to do it, I think, a really bit of tactical advice. I always recommend one get multiple mentors simultaneously. It's always good to have that feedback. But find a tactical mentor, someone who is where you are but a year more experienced, because they are in the weeds of what you're doing on a day by day basis. And then find someone directional, someone's 10, 15, 20 years, because they can help with some of the bigger, might be more philosophical stuff.
Speaker 2:Um, and I find those two things they really like gel together so well because you get this great skill acquisition and the bit that you finished on, which I think is so underrated, which is become a mentor yourself. You are more experienced, no matter where you are in your career, than someone else and you have a support and talent and sometimes just a friendly ear to help other people. And I can't tell you if it's karmic justice or it's just the way the ecosystem works, but that stuff finds its way back out and I've benefited so much from helping other people. And then you, you know, word gets around, reputations build um and doors open as a result of you giving back it's. It's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1:You know, even when you are a mentor, you, you learn from them as well, but it is, it's a two-way street. It's not because you know, I'm just a mentor, you know, I'm just going to be learning from you. So, um, which is again a great opportunity, and great opportunity and the way of doing things in different generations. I think, if both parties are completely invested, it's a win-win for both sides 100%.
Speaker 2:I can't remember who said it, but someone said you teach the lessons you're desperate to be taught, so I think that's a great place to end. Puthiritia, who do you want to refer us into? We always believe in mentorship on this podcast, so we ask our current guest to recommend our next guest. Puthiritia, do you have a mind?
Speaker 1:So I would like to connect you with, I think, another great leader in the industry. That was a peer of mine, but more than a leader and a great peer, I think he's an amazing human being in every sense of the word. Uh, his name is luke allport. He is the vp of channel for splunk with the uk. So, um, yeah, so I will, I will, I will connect. Look with yourselves, because I think I think you you will hear wonderful stories, uh, from him awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for sharing uh your time and experience today. It's been awesome having you up now.
Speaker 1:Thank you my pleasure. Thanks for having me.