Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Mark Butler - Why Passion and Personal Brand Win in Channel Sales
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Mark Butler, Global Partner Manager at Zebra Technologies, to explore the lessons learned from a 25-year journey across reseller and vendor roles. From launching a personal YouTube channel to navigating the complexities of global partner ecosystems, Mark shares how consistency, creativity, and curiosity have helped him build lasting channel equity.
We dive into how Mark has developed a standout personal brand while driving strategic growth at one of the world’s most recognizable enterprise tech brands, including:
- How he intentionally transitioned from reseller to vendor by showing up with persistence and passion
- Why launching a channel-focused YouTube series nearly a decade ago became a key differentiator
- The lessons learned from operating in both challenger and market-dominant OEM environments
- Why authenticity and emotional investment are crucial in long-term partner success
- How internal newsletters and external enablement content became tools for influence and scale
- The mindset of “bias for action” and how failing fast builds resilience and sharpens strategy
Mark’s insights cut across partner enablement, personal branding, and channel evolution, making this a must-listen for anyone navigating a long-term career in the channel.
Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/partnermanagermark/
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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, mark. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Doing well. Alex, Thank you Appreciate the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excited to have you on. In a weird way, as with a lot of things in the channel, we have been in similar companies, some of the similar spaces. I started my career at ScanSource where Zebra was one of the most important brands to that distributor. Maybe, if they're uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of an introduction about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you. My name is Mark Butler. As you mentioned, I am on the global partners team here at Zebra. I've been with the company since 2011 through a couple of acquisitions, but I'm based in Cleveland, ohio, in the US. I've been in Cleveland since high school, so over half my life now. Been in Cleveland since high school so over half my life now but been in this specific industry for 25 years. I spent the first 11 years at a Zebra reseller and I think part of what we're going to be talking about I left that reseller a company called Lowry Computer, now known as Lowry Solutions but I left that reseller primarily really to get into channel sales. That was the primary reason for me wanting to, or feeling like I should leave just to continue my career progression, because I wanted to get into the channel side of the business. I absolutely love channel sales. I really like kind of working with a partner and building that kind of a long-term strategy trying to help set that partner up for success.
Speaker 1:I know we'll talk about it further on in the podcast, but there's some differences between working with a partner as a channel account manager, at least within Zebra, and having a territory and having a bunch of partners within a territory versus being on the global partner side of things.
Speaker 2:So it's a tale as old as channel time. I suppose You're in the reseller and you wanted to make your way to vendor land. I think that's a lot of our listeners will resonate with that story, either because they've done it or they want to do it. Maybe talk us through what you did to intentionally break into that world, because I think that's a path that our audience wants to follow.
Speaker 1:I mentioned the name of the company I was working for. It was a company called Lowry Computer, now known as Lowry Solutions. I worked in their Ohio office. At the time there was a I guess I'll use names there was a guy who worked for a company called Intermec who's now part of one of Zebra competitor in many markets on Honeywell. But Bill Twiss was our camera channel account manager at Lowry and I saw the way that he interacted with Lowry, like some of the leadership, trying to build awareness, build mind share and market share for his brand, and I saw the way he interacted with me as a sales rep and so my sales rep peers, and it really inspired me to want to get into that side of the business and I'm sure I've mentioned to him somewhere over the years. I haven't talked to him at this point for probably over 10, 12 years but he was my inspiration for wanting to get into channel sales. Really I owe it all to him. I think he's still working for the same company but I think within I had that opportunity to go to a OEM. It was a smaller OEM called Scientech Logics. They were a small boutique hardware OEM device manufacturer, mobile computer manufacturer who competed with Motorola Solutions, who ultimately acquired Scientech Logics a couple years later.
Speaker 1:But anyways, the gentleman who hired me I think I just kind of beat him down. He's still in the industry too, a guy named Mike McGerman. I remember he hired me sight unseen, which he probably hopefully doesn't mind me saying that he had an offer out to one person that we had interviewed. He had an offer out to one person that fell through. I think my persistence helped show him that I was going to be a hard seller and really be passionate about the role. So this is before COVID, before Zoom and Teams, really. Uh so we did it all based on phone interviews.
Speaker 2:Uh, so to this day I still joke with them when I see them at events yeah, I, uh, I love this story, right, because I think there's there's two pieces in there. It's hard work and tenacity, which you need to be a successful rep, especially within partnerships. Right, it's one thing being able to close a deal, but building a partnership there's such delayed gratification in that process, right, it takes a long time to get the first deal over the line, and the reason you put all of that work in is because you're hoping that first deal is going to turn into hundreds. A mentor of mine early on in my career he just simple expression, hard work works, which was hey, hey, everyone appreciates a grafter, like everyone, even people who don't want to buy from you like persistence and tenacity at some point, even if they're never going to buy from you, they respect, and so it's gratifying to see that, hey, even 10 years later, my mentor is still proving uh, proving right well, there there is a saying.
Speaker 1:I don't remember where I heard it, but I I've used it kind of in jest or jokingly with people I've had to be persistent with and I I said there's a fine line between persistence and being a pest uh, so hopefully I'm kind of going up to that line but not stepping over it. But again, it's out of interest, it's out of passion, uh, and so forth, you know, trying to build something together.
Speaker 2:And so you touched on Scion, and then the acquisition by Motorola, and now that's gone through another round into Zebra. M&a teaches us a lot in terms of building business, because you you're suddenly immersed in another cult, in another culture, in other operations, another direction, culture and other operations and other direction. Talk to me about how did those transitions shape your view of the channel and what lessons you learned about sort of, I suppose, resilience, tenacity, but also maybe a bit of adaptability as well in partner ecosystems.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I mentioned the fact that Scion was a smaller boutique manufacturer ultra rugged mobile computers and so forth, being acquired by Motorola, who was the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. That was the ones we competed with most often, but in the Scion world it was a lot of it was. It was a lot of really trying to trying to claw and scratch to build that mind share or earn that mind share and earn that earn that. You know. Show the partners why we were relevant, why we can help them win, how we can work with them and give them a totally different competitive differentiator than maybe the other partners that they were used to work with, the other OEMs that they were used to working with. So it was, you know, a lot of, even back in those days was it was relatively early on in like social selling, I guess? Uh, so we used a lot of um, social media to kind of create awareness for the brand and so forth. It was almost like a you know, signed at a fair amount of guerrilla marketing, so to speak.
Speaker 1:You know, and we, as at least me, as a cam, I kind of followed along that and try to employ somebody as myself and build my own network, you know, because, again, I was one guy having four, five, six states at that time. Can't be everywhere all the time, but at least trying to, you know, drip information or be use tactics like social media. This was before we were using, before I was using video, but using tactics like social media to drip content to them or at least show them. You know, hey, mark Butler, he's still out there. You know, gotta remember about Scion and so forth.
Speaker 1:So they're going from like a boutique manufacturer to going to like Motorola then, where every partner I worked with at that point I mean we were there, almost almost everyone we were their primary OEM. You know, we had the market share out there, we had the recognition of end user customers and so forth. So it was a total change in that case. In that case I started looking at things a little differently and don't have to be the challenger sale anymore. You don't have to be the challenger Now. We're the dominant player in the market share.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Zebra is kind of similarly, zebra acquiring Motorola Solutions, similar position, kind of the dominant market share player, and I think we're gonna get into some of that, some of the tactics I use to try to grow market share and build mind share, build market share and grow mind share. Whatever you know, I'm saying yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's funny when suddenly you have power of brand on your side. I've been in that competitive displacement territory and and the story I often use is, I also ran Zoom's distribution strategy through COVID and so I joke where I felt like I could almost get any meeting with anyone that I wanted, because for a moment in time, zoom was, I mean, the most powerful brand in the world. Right, and it was very funny because I then, two years later, started selling into the people that I had been partnering with, uh, and it was a lot harder to get people's attention again, whereas, yeah, suddenly I felt like, oh, I could ping, you know, the most senior person at td synax, I could ping the most senior person at google, and everyone would be like I would love to speak to Zoom and have a conversation. And, yeah, I think it teaches you a lot to not have that brand, but when the brand's with you, it certainly helps.
Speaker 1:You mentioned brand and you're right, the corporate brand, the company brand. So I totally agree. You mentioned how much harder it was afterwards. But can you imagine if you hadn't probably built your own personal brand it would be? It would be even harder. I'm assuming I'm certain of it Similar to my son. Both my kids are in college universities you guys call it in this case. But we talk about, you know, the network. You're trying to build a network and he's at the age where you know, he's like I said to him last night. I said you know something I haven't mentioned to you yet since you've been home from school. He goes, I know, I know, I know linkedin, you know, you know. So he's starting to kind of get it. You know that building your personal brand and building a network, it's so important. So I'm just saying to you maybe we're going off topic topic a little bit, but imagine how much harder it would have been for you if you didn't have your personal brand that you created.
Speaker 2:That's what I. It's actually the thing I love most about the channel. Right, I'm really passionate about the channel. I have a podcast about it. It'd be weird if I wasn't passionate about it.
Speaker 2:But I think there is no other world where you get to work with people, compete against people, but all the equity that you build in those relationships comes with you because suddenly the guy that you used to compete with and maybe you won some, lost some, he's now managing over here or she's managing over there and they need someone to join the team, and all of that equity and that network is so valuable. And so when we talk about sort of high leverage activities, partnerships is a high leverage activity because you win a partner and then they win lots of deals. But the same is so true of this network, and I found this podcast has been a wonderful way for me to build connections with people that maybe I wouldn't have the opportunity to build connections with. And, like you say, if you approach that, I suppose, honestly and openly and and and you're not, uh, doing it for the wrong reasons that reciprocity comes around and it's a wonderful thing authenticity yes, I've been genuine authentic.
Speaker 2:Yes so maybe, speaking on authenticity, you did something where I think you're the first person I've ever heard who did this, which was sort of at the maybe the infancy of YouTube. You built a channel, orientated YouTube channel, to help sort of drive your part of performance. One how did that come about? And two, how did it go?
Speaker 1:Well, it actually started November 27th 2014. I still remember the date. That's the day the channel was born. I think during that time you're going through the acquisition well, the integration into Zebra from Motorola Solutions, and I knew that there was only X number of FTE slots, full-time employee type slots on the team. There were other people that I. I mean there was going to be some attrition, people might go into a new role or find a new role or so forth, but I felt like I needed to differentiate myself and I thought, you know, video is becoming more and more popular.
Speaker 1:Back in those days, I mean, there was always talk about the joke with YouTube is like funny cat videos and things like that, but, you know, using it for marketing purposes, becoming more and more, you know, relevant. At that time and I thought you know what, let me build a YouTube channel and I got a URL, channelmanagermarkcom. I don't think I don't own it anymore, but it rolled off the tongue, but anyways. But my point was I wanted to use that to connect with my partners and again, I mentioned having multiple states as a territory and multiple partners. So I think there was like 10 or 11 named partners with a couple hundred, you know, kind of smaller resellers, but having a way to I used this term earlier and I'll probably use it again drip information out to them about the brand, about the product, about news or whatever. So at that point I did start this channel and I use it as a way to share information about the portfolio or about the industry or about technology and so forth, and I would either do a video on a certain trend.
Speaker 1:At that time it was we were getting into more and more, getting into getting away from Windows mobile and getting into Android, and at that time a lot of the resellers out there were very much assuming that the world would continue with, with, with Microsoft and Windows mobile and Android was becoming at least in our world. We were putting all of our you know, most of our eggs in the Android basket, saw the way the brains really were, and so I was using that to kind of share information, share reasoning about you know in this, in this case, android, why the transition to android for mobile devices was was so important and why that mattered to the end users. But I would, I would interview zebra product managers, we do demos or talk about a new part of the portfolio, so forth, but really utilizing youtube as a tool and and maybe trying to share information in a way that a marketing slick or a powerpoint or some sort of pdf you know data sheet may come across. Some people might think, well, that's, it's marketing, speak or whatever. Trying to do it in an authentic way, using the term again, and you mentioned about you never hearing of anyone doing that before.
Speaker 1:At the time there was a woman who reached out to me. She wrote for a company called Vertical Reseller News and she actually did an article on me in a vertical magazine back in the day.
Speaker 2:I don't think that magazine is still around, but I still have PDF copies of it in my file, so no, I I'm I'm always sort of fascinated by people who try and box smarter than others and and you know, I think, uh, I think a lot of what separates the successful from everyone else is they find high leverage activities. So how do we do a job so well that we only need to do it once so we can do it in a really scalable way? That's the sort of entire design of the channel, right? The reason Zebra doesn't have thousands of direct reps is because actually it's better, it's more scalable, there's better routes to market.
Speaker 2:There's not just a reason that we do it. We don't do it because it's fun. We do it because it's fun. We do it because it's actually better, and I and I really like the, the lesson in there in terms of you know, to some level, you felt that your job was on the line and you needed a higher leverage activity to to create more value, to build more value and and and then to also get commended within a um, a magazine for for sort of creating that separation, I think is awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, it also goes back to what we were talking about before, about, in this case, our personal brands. That helped build my own personal brand. There are still people when I see them in an event, people in the company, they'll say, oh, jam Manager, mark or Jam Manager, you know, I haven't used that. The site's still there. The pages are on the YouTube channel still there.
Speaker 2:But I don't use it in the same way, and I don't use it, but it's still, it's part of my personal brand. It's yeah for sure, yeah, um, and so you've obviously built almost a marketing engine within your, your personal brand, which I think is a certainly advisable. I think, um, you know, building a personal network, posting on social media, creating youtube videos all of those things people will perceive as marketing, but marketing is just sales, but to more people. So I think it's fairly valuable. You've done videos, you've done newsletters, you've done podcast appearances to build Mindshare. What are some of the tips, tricks, tactics that you found to be most effective, that you would sort of advise our audience?
Speaker 1:Hey, if I was going to start, here is maybe where I would start yeah, I mean, I guess, if a newsletter or I don't, whatever the correct in vogue term is for it now, uh, you know, that might be the the has the least barrier of entry, the easiest to start with. But I do think video is great because it lets it really convey. People see your body language. They see you know your eyes, you know so forth. I mean I think the authenticity shows through more, but each one serves a different purpose. You know, in my mind, you know, know, we're working with a, a regional partner.
Speaker 1:When I had multiple states as a cam channel account manager in motorola or zebra back in the day, you know, all those partners kind of woke up in the morning thinking about our industry and zebra was maybe their primary partner that they worked with. So we didn't have to really fight to get mindshare with them and so forth, working on the global partner scene. Since I've been doing since January 2019, the partners I work with are household names, but they're not focused. The reason for their business, the reason for them getting up in the morning, is not focused on barcoding, data collection, rfid. You know that type of thing, you know. So utilizing different strategies, like whether it's a newsletter or video or whatever it depends. So I'll elaborate. You know, during COVID we weren't, you know, we weren't really traveling, so I had, in some respects, I had more time because I wasn't traveling. And you know, I mentioned the fact that the Zebra excuse me, the partners weren't maybe waking in the morning thinking about Zebra, thinking about our type of technology. So I started this newsletter and I remember we talked about this in kind of this prep call.
Speaker 1:You know, I had two versions of the same newsletter. One version of the newsletter was geared towards the Zebra sellers so they could get to know my partners again, who are household names but not necessarily known by many of the zebra sellers at the time as being a. They didn't realize they're a zebra partner. Um, you know, you have a newsletter geared towards our internal zebra sellers to kind of, you know, evangelize the value proposition of my partner and then have also separate newsletter but almost very similar content.
Speaker 1:Just a little difference, a different tweet. You know, different, different slant to a different angle, a different newsletter that I would share with my partners, also sharing, you know, sharing the value of what Zebra is and how they can help, how Zebra can help them sell differently, differentiate, have some sort of unique value. It's more unique to serve value proposition and so forth, you know. So I kind of looked at it. You know I need to be able to market and I guess use that word market or evangelize our message both ways, both internally and externally. Because in in the global partners world, a lot of the partners, a lot of the sales reps between the partner and the zebra person they had not met before between the partner and the zebra person they had not met before.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, so to echo, I think in a world where chat, gpt is becoming sort of the most widely used productivity in the world, video is going to win because the ability for every salesperson and every marketeer to churn out loads of newsletters and blog posts and email blasts, and that is becoming more congested a higher quality, but also more congested, and so people want to buy from people. And so if you're using channel manager mark and hey, there's the whites of your eyes and they know who you are and they resonate with you, that video is going to do significantly better and even if the algorithm doesn't reward it in the same way, they will reward it better.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I definitely wasn't out for the, the YouTube algorithm. I was. I wasn't trying to get my message on the YouTube days. I was not trying to get the message out to thousands and thousands of people. I wasn't looking for anything to go viral out to thousands and thousands of people. I wasn't looking for anything to go viral just to make sure that people, my partners, had a place to go or knew that there would be some sort of interesting content coming out, whether weekly, bi-weekly, whatever it was at the time. But I think in my case, I kind of have an affinity for this type of approach. I like to be, I guess, creative. I'm not an type of approach I like to be, I guess, creative. I'm not an artist, but I like to be creative and, uh, you know, let's me exercise the other side of my brain, I guess I don't know so maybe, um, some advice to, uh, some of the people who are more in the infancy of their channel career.
Speaker 2:You've navigated a 20-year career and risen. I always think it's a really great sign that someone is doing very well if they continue to rise through the ranks within the same company for a long period of time. Right, because that's proof that you're delivering value and delivering value. And delivering value. What's a key lesson that you can leave our audience with today in terms of the right way to build yourself, build your partners, build your channel so that they can continue to thrive over a 20-year period?
Speaker 1:I'd say and this is the same with anything, but for me it's never stop learning. You know, I always acknowledge that I can do better, I can be better. I always want to learn, I always want to get better at something and you used this term earlier but you know passion. Let your passion show through because, as the example you shared, people will see that passion. They'll see that you're genuine, authentic. They'll see that you care and they're going to know that you're doing your best or you want to do your best. You're emotionally invested in success of you know whether you're going to know that you're doing your best or you want to do your best. You're emotionally invested in success, whether you're trying to grow something with your partner or the company you work for. Both sides will see that you're emotionally invested in that success and that will definitely help, and maybe the most. I don't know if it's the most important thing, but I guess it's the thing I'll close with be curious, always be curious, and don't be afraid to take action. You can't be passive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all of my team are going to roll their eyes because I'm going to speak about the Amazon Leadership Principles, which I bang on about, I think, three times a day. But my favorite one has always been bias for action. Because you have such little data, especially when you're early on in your career, you don't have enough experience to really truly understand what's happening in the world around you. But when you go and do something, you get feedback, and feedback is the data points you need to continue to learn and to continue to be curious and to continue to improve. Learn and to continue to be curious and to continue to improve. Um, and yet I see so many people delaying that first video, that first call, that first email, that first lunch, because they want to do more planning and more preparation. And I'm just like but you know nothing until you go and do the thing and, by the way, do it like a hundred times, because the first 99 actually don't because you did it so badly.
Speaker 2:There's no data in there. Um, go and make. Go and make the thousand to ten thousand calls and then come back to me and tell me what your analysis is. But until you've you know, today, we released our 150th episode today for the podcast, on the 14th of may, which is awesome. But I sit there and think, oh, my god, the first 148 were awful, like the. The process just gets so much better right, and so I think, if you're looking for roi or you're looking for returns too quickly, um, yeah, that that that do things, get get lots done and do that for a consistent period well, yeah, I mean they say that if you want to become really proficient in something, what's that?
Speaker 1:say, 10,000 hours? Yeah, I don't know if that's accurate or not, but the spirit of it is probably true. Yeah, you can't just jump out and expect that first time you're going to be good at something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I do think there is that fear of failure and we we talk a lot internally or I talk a lot with my team internally about, yeah, but your job is to fail a hundred times, and then, after a hundred, we'll have a chat like we can't. We can't see that first failure as the barrier, because my expectation is you're going to fail loads, and then, after, we might have learned something.
Speaker 1:It's amazing because that fear of failure you're not born with that, it's something that somehow you absorb it, you're conditioned to maybe have a fear of failure. I mean, I've seen an analogy maybe you and maybe the listeners have seen it too but like a toddler learning to walk, they don't fall down 20, 30 times or more and say, oh, this isn't for me, I'm just going to continue crawling, for that's my.
Speaker 2:You know they don't do that, they keep trying, you know 100 and I and I, I've really found, if you're going to build a team, that real unlock is understanding what is behind that failure. Failure, right, so is it. Hey, I don't want to be embarrassed, and that's, by the way. It's like 98 of the time and then it's just like perfect. Can I just walk you through the 17 failures that me and the team had yesterday and then we can just get rid of that whole problem. And from there, that's where I see performance like run. It's like, yeah, I can tell you performance like run. Because it's like, yeah, I can tell you story after story and scar after scar of the horrendous first meeting and demo and call and all of them, which is awful, I I mean, I I think about all the time.
Speaker 1:I think back to some of my early times in like channel sales, or even when I was working at the reseller calling on end users, and how much I've changed, how much I'm not talking about the technology of the industry how much I had changed my approach and so forth.
Speaker 2:Yes, totally Well. We spoke about high leverage, we spoke about bias for action. We spoke about a lot. I like to do lots of podcasts, clearly, and I like to do high leverage activities, which means I like to be lazy Mark. We always ask our current guest to recommend our next guest. Who did you have in mind?
Speaker 1:There is a woman I think I might have mentioned at one point. Her name's Debbie Bessemer, from Havas. She is someone who I recently got to know at an industry trade show. She had a happy hour event and I was invited by extension through one of my partners. Really impressed with her she. She is passionate, she has great ideas. She has built a brand for herself, like her own personal brand, like we talked about before. I think she would be a good one to talk to amazing, excited to have Debbie on.
Speaker 2:And, mark, thank you so much for your time today. It's been awesome without Mark.
Speaker 1:thank you so much for your time today. It's been awesome, Without a doubt. Thank you so much, Alex.