Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Amy Avalos - Partner Marketing That Works
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Amy Avalos, Director of Partner Marketing at Zendesk, who brings over 15 years of experience across nearly every role in the partner ecosystem. With a rich background spanning startups to global tech companies, Amy unpacks the realities and myths of partner marketing, partner-led growth, and building scalable programs that actually deliver.
We explore when organizations should invest in partnerships, why partner feedback is one of your most underutilized assets, and how go-to-market success starts with mastering your own motion before layering on scale. Amy also dives deep into marketing-led strategies for channel success, with sharp insights into how marketing to partners differs from end-customer marketing, especially when operating at scale.
Whether you're building early partner programs or optimizing a mature ecosystem, this conversation is packed with frameworks, first-hand lessons, and practical advice. Tune in to learn how to position your partners for success, align internal teams, and elevate your partner marketing game.
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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 Amy. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Hey Alex, good morning, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm excited for this one. It's always great to see someone as optimistic and sort of energetic as I am, so it makes this part of the job really, really easy. Maybe if the uninitiated you could give us a bit of an introduction about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much, Alex, and hi everyone. My name is Amy Avalos. I am the director of partner marketing here at Zendesk. That being said, I have been in partner land for 15 plus years. I love to joke with folks that I've held every single role in a partner org, except for the technical ones. You don't want me doing this, but I definitely consider myself a partner person and so I'm really passionate about all things partner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think if you've been in every role in a partnerships organization, you know sometimes that senior leadership or revenue leaders suddenly go hey, partnerships, that's just how we're going to solve everything. It's just the perfect bandaid. It will solve every problem, from product market fit to why can't we break a billion dollars revenue? Amy? Explain why that's not true.
Speaker 2:Oh, alex, and to your point, I've seen that movie more times than I'd like to count. There is this. So what's so great about partners? It's almost like this mythical being right, and I actually love it when people think to themselves hey, partnerships can solve my problems, guess what they probably can, but it's not that magic pill, it's not something that is going to happen for you or your team overnight.
Speaker 2:I once saw a particular organization I'm not going to name names because I'm nice like that but I once saw a particular organization that was looking to kind of spin off a piece of their business and go into more of a B2B moment, but they hadn't really gotten a ton of customers themselves yet and they said, well, this is great, we're just going to go sell it through partners. And the challenge there was if you don't know how to sell it yourself, if you don't have your own story, if you haven't figured out kind of what that secret sauce is, what that customer need truly is, that are making people knock down your door to grab that solution, a partner is not going to be able to do it for you, right? A company needs to get down their own rhythms, their own motions. They need to really understand their market fit and value and then bring partners along on that journey and that ride. Right Once you have that sorted, a partner can come in and add their own magic sprinkles to it to make it even better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always think partnerships and channelers scale right, but they'll scale the good and the bad right.
Speaker 1:So if you don't, really if, like, here are the mistakes we make as a direct organization, guess what? Now just imagine a thousand more reps making those same mistakes, right? So I really love that idea of scale what's working. But, to your point, if you don't really know what's working, the last thing you want to start doing is going white exactly and you know what, if there's a problem to be found, by the way, a partner will find it.
Speaker 2:That is the blessing and the curse of a partner. You want to find chinks in your armor. You want to figure out, like, where are their gaps? Bring in a partner and they're to find chinks in your armor. You want to figure out, like, where are their gaps? Bring in a partner and they'll share that with you. And actually, alex, to that end, I wish that more folks did bring partners in earlier in their process. Right, you have these amazing, incredible, trusted advisors in your network who, if they're already your partner, they're invested in your success. Right, they've raised their hand to say your technology, your solution, your organization is something that we believe in, that we want to invest our resources in it. They're a great, fresh pair of eyes and I don't know that folks take advantage of that enough.
Speaker 1:No, and I fully agree. And actually partners are sort of a conduit, right. So let's just for the sake of the hypothetical and say hey, you've built a new networking product. Now you might hire a few people from cisco and a few people from hpe, because that obviously makes a lot of sense, but they've probably worked at like one vendor or maybe two vendors. You go and speak to a partner and they've done a technical assessment of like 15. They've deployed four. They've uh, they've understood the rebate and the partner programs from each one of those. They know who the leaders they like and the ones they don't like. They know which one, the brand works. They have so much more surface area and so I often find their feedback is a lot more valuable because they have seen and done more than we have as an individual person, because they've had to deal with all that traffic well, and it's.
Speaker 2:it's kind of that moment, alex, of Instagram versus reality, or maybe the more grown-up way to say that is theory versus practice, right? Those partners have seen so many different models and, to your point, they participated in so many different programs. They've evaluated so many different solutions. They know what is kind of in the marketing blurb versus what actually happens on the ground.
Speaker 1:Instagram versus reality way better way of putting it, don't worry, it's more fun. Yeah, obviously, and so I think the sort of really interesting question is so when is the right time to invest in building out a partnership strategy and a channel? Because, you know, I hear from VCs hey, it's series B Once you raise 100 million. We're going to do this and this is the key channel. Or it's a revenue threshold, or it's when we're going to try and break into EMEA. Everyone sort of has their own definition of when. What's yours?
Speaker 2:Oh, alex, asking a very loaded question very early on in this podcast. I really do think that that answer is slightly different for every organization and it depends on your model, it depends on how you're looking to move forward, but there are a few key things that I would argue have to be in place, right? Number one please already have customers. You need to be able to have that demonstration of customer success. You need to be able to have those key metrics of how your customers are using your solution today or how they're proving value already. And then you have to really be ready to integrate your sales team with partners.
Speaker 2:Right, we all know that partners they can go sell by themselves and they do a really great job. But in order to get that going, you have to be ready with that flywheel and there's that moment of that connection between a sales team and a partner ecosystem to go off and run. So if you have a customer base and you have a really solid connected story about who you are, what you do and what that value is, and you have a sales team and an executive team that's ready to say, let's bring partners into the fold, let's get this flywheel moving and going together, then I would argue that you have at least the foundation of the right ingredients to bring in partners.
Speaker 1:I love it. Now, one of the things that, as sort of channel professionals and partnerships professionals, sometimes we get mis-sold. So someone comes in and goes, hey look, we've got all these foundational pieces in place, the channel's ready to scale and we've really come in. Amy, you just need to come in, be the catalyst, it's all going to be great. Very often not quite the case, and you walk in and it is a lot more chaotic and maybe some of that infrastructure is wearing a little bit thin. Talk to me about when you first land in that new partnerships environment. What is that like? Because there is so much volume to deal with and I think that's one of the things. Sort of AEs and people who work in direct go to market don't understand, because when you work in, it's like okay, who are my customers? What's the ICP? What's the messaging Cool. What's the product? Great. How do we integrate? Awesome, and it's all of that plus all the partners. So how do you sort of digest and decide where to prioritize?
Speaker 2:So I think that one of the most important things about partnerships is it's all connected. Right, it is an internal partnership as much as it is partnerships with external organizations. And so when you think about partners and so, for example, right now I am in a partner marketing role when I think about partner marketing, people think, oh well, you just really need to understand the marketing day. Nope, I need to understand the entire partner organization, because everything is interdependent, right, everything is connected. So my first like, let's call it like the first 90 days, right, I argue, alex, in those first 90 days, you need to do a lot of listening and a lot of learning. To harken back to my AWS days, you need to learn and be curious and dive deep. You have to really take the time to understand all different sides of the story because, also, depending upon how mature your partner ecosystem is or isn't, the sentiment internally may be very different from the sentiment externally.
Speaker 2:So how are you really gathering that information? And I find that when you listen and, again, you're really kind of diving deep with these different teams that are required for your success, everybody has a slightly different story, but you also tend to start to see patterns, and so, as you identify those patterns, it really does uncover what are the big rocks. And I think that any time that you are creating kind of your strategy or your plan for moving forward, it's what are the big rocks Like, what are the biggest challenges and how do I build the right foundation to start to tackle those challenges? Because the other challenge or issue that I see is that a lot of companies say, okay, well, what's the Band-Aid that I can do to fix this thing right now? And I'll tell you, alex, I don't believe in Band-Aids.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you need a Band-Aid and that's okay. But if you're not treating the cause, it doesn't matter that you're treating the symptoms. So what are those big symptoms that you know has to change and are going to take that longer time? Much that partnerships is about scale, right, and so the problem with a bandaid is like, hey, this is going to work for three months. You go, yeah, but we're doing three. Five year planning, right, so a quarter? Well, it is obviously important. There's no, there's no point having a five year win. That means you don't win for the first four years because none of us are going to be in the job. But it is about how do we sort of balance that threshold. But you're right, if we're having to keep break, fixing everything along the way, we're just never getting ahead of the real challenges, because every time you add another 500 partners, that problem gets a lot more complicated.
Speaker 2:A lot more complicated, as we already talked about. They're going to find all your problems.
Speaker 1:So I want to double click on partner marketing um, because I have a ted talk that one day I'm going to give um that partner marketing is the most misunderstood part of the channel, and I think, especially when it comes to segmentation. So when we think about enterprise channel strategy, it's very sales led because it's a sales led motion. Now my personal theory is uh, in the sm because it's a sales-led motion. Now my personal theory is in the SMB, it's not a sales-led motion, it's a marketing-led motion because SMB is very close to consumer and consumer is a marketing-led strategy. Talk to me about how, from a partner marketing perspective, you view how your strategy and your techniques and some of those priorities change depending on what market segment you're going to prioritize.
Speaker 2:So first and foremost, alex, I want to thank you because I feel seen, and I feel seen because you've shared that partner marketing is maybe one of the most misunderstood elements of marketing within just any organization. Alex, when I'm thinking about partner marketing, let's maybe first ground on what partner marketing should be before we answer the second part of your question, because I think it's important. Partner marketing is go-to-market strategy, right?
Speaker 2:It's not just about executing at a point in time. It's about what is the end-to-end view of how it is that you're actually going to market with your joint message, your joint solution, whatever it is, but it is not. Let's just throw together a few webinars and see what hits.
Speaker 1:It's just loading stuff in the partner portal, right, it's just assets. No, no, no, yeah, you just put it in the partner portal, you click a button, the partners will send this email and all the leads will come.
Speaker 2:That's what happens. Right, there's a call that I'm remembering in my memory where I heard a sales exec say well, yeah, the partner can just do a webinar, right? I'm like, oh gosh, no, maybe as part of a broader strategy and maybe a little bit further down the line. So glad we agree on that, alex. That's a very important component and very important for our listeners, watchers, to understand. So to your question about what kind of differs between when you're selling to the enterprise versus when you're selling an SMB, let's start with some of the things that have to stay the same. First and foremost, every partner needs to understand what their own unique story is.
Speaker 2:At Zendesk, you will hear me talk on all kinds of broadcasts to our partners and direct partner meetings and newsletters. I always say you're not here to sell Zendesk. No one's going to sell Zendesk better than Zendesk. You are here to sell yourself powered by Zendesk. It doesn't matter how big or small the company is. They're looking to build a relationship with an organization with a particular area of expertise. Right, when you have a partner and you have their span of customers, that customer has built a certain level of trust with their partner. They are their trusted advisor. So how are we adding, how are we being, you know, that force multiplier to the solutions that that partner can offer and better positioning them as that thought leader, not only with their customers, but even potentially a new set of customers? So when you're selling into the enterprise, but even potentially a new set of customers, so when you're selling into the enterprise, it's obviously a lot more of a bespoke experience, right? You think about the big RFPs, you think about all the design sessions that go into it.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to say that there's not marketing involved in that. There absolutely is, because that story needs to be that red thread that carries you through. Again, very critical component of go-to-market is what is that story? But to your point, alex, when you get into SMB and I'm thinking of really selling through, like Disty, for example, shout out to all of the Distys listening to us. You all do some incredible skilled work out there. But when you're thinking about a reseller who's in a disty environment and they're getting a lot of different reach outs from the disty about different solutions, different technologies that they can add to their marketplaces, it's a little bit about we as a company, marketing to those resellers about our value prop and then them carrying through that value prop back out to their customer base. So, yes, it is marketing.
Speaker 2:However, here's where I give an asterisk to what you said, alex. I think that it it, while it is largely marketing, I would argue that it's not a marketing led versus sales led motion, because even at that smaller level, right, it doesn't matter how big or small a company is, ever there's still that relationship component, so you can market to somebody all day long. Right, I live in Los Angeles. Do you know how many billboards I see? Do you know how many billboards I see? You can put all these images in somebody's face. But, using my LA analogy, if I see a billboard for a TV show and I know an actor because I've liked their work and something else, I'm probably more likely to check out that show, right?
Speaker 2:Same thing within these reseller communities or when you're working with an SMB. These are folks that want that deep relationship with who it is that they're working with. There is that certain level of familiarity. Thinking back to some of the SMBs that I've had the pleasure of working with over my career, I mean they know everything about you, they know your dog's name, they know your birthday. I mean, it's these true, deep, incredible relationships. And so that relationship, that connection, isn't marketing, it's something that gets formed because, again, you are still that trusted advisor. Yes, you continue to have that story that you need to tell. Yes, there's a little bit more scale involved in terms of how am I pushing out this message, but that relationship is always mission critical and that's where partners add the most value right Because they do have those really special and deep relationships.
Speaker 1:I completely agree, I think, where I'm sort of fascinated because I maybe this is just bias because I come from distribution world, but I've always found the scale part of the channel the more interesting problem to tackle, maybe because it's the more complicated one, because the difference between getting one partner to do a thousand and a thousand partners to do one is it is the requires, it's your own unique skill set. But I've always found the scale problem the more interesting one. When we talk about building a best in class partner experience, at that scaled environment you are less reliant on hey, here's Alex and he's going to do floor works and he's going to be super charming and they're really going to like him to hey. What are some more of the programmatic levers that we sort of need to create? Because it's about marketing to partners and then helping partners market to their end users. How do you sort of think about that?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh. So first of all, again, you're speaking to my scaled heart over here. I led global distribution for Dropbox once upon a time ago, and I think the red thread through my career has been everything about scale To your point, alex. It's fascinating. And, yes, it's not just about marketing to an end customer, it's about marketing to that partner, and how you create self-service experiences for partners is critical. How you provide prescriptive guidance in a consumable way within any given resource is also critical. So I always think about what is your partner portal experience right? Your partner portal needs to be your hub, your source of truth, the place where everybody's able to dig in and find whatever it is that they need, and find it easily and intuitively right. And within that portal, how are you ensuring that the content that you have there is its own special form of guidance? And what I mean by that is as, as you know, some of the things that I've recently launched for Zendesk is, for example, these customizable pieces of collateral. So we've already filled in like, hey, here is just some really great solution focus messaging about CX, for example. But partners, here's where you can add. Here's a whole section that's just for you. Please add in your own story, your own secret sauce, and I'm going to give you some prescriptive bullets right here to say here are some things that I would recommend that you mention. Right? So the partner hasn't had to go out to a special training. The partner hasn't had to go find different resource to figure out how to put this together. It's a one-stop shop, right?
Speaker 2:One of the things I love most about partners is that they're lazy, and I mean that in the best way possible. Right, and it's not actually lazy. That's what people like to joke and say. But in reality it's. Partners have a lot of different people coming at them, different partners, people within their own organization. So how do we package things up nicely? How do we make this something that is easy for them to consume and move forward with without a ton of lift, right? So if you can make your messaging, if you can make your experience easy one-stop shop, there is no question about where the partner is meant to go, where they need to go find things, it's going to be a lot easier for them to move forward.
Speaker 1:I love it, amy. I think the brands and the sort of program designers that really meet the partner where they are whether we call them lazy or maybe something with slightly more kindness, the theory is correct, right, which is, if you raise the bar and go, hey, we want you to jump through 15 hoops. Good luck, because while I'm sure your product is great, what I have found the biggest differentiator is program and people.
Speaker 2:A thousand percent. And, by the way, I love what you said, alex, about meeting partners where they are. I use that phrase all the time as a Bruin. That Arthur Ashe quote is something that has been present in my life for a long time now. It's also about building for your entire ecosystem, right?
Speaker 2:I always hear requests for like hey, can we get this bespoke thing for this partner over here? And my response is always okay, well, what is really the need? Let's get away from what is the deliverable, right, let's get to what is the need and what is the ask. And is there a way that I can build that so that way, one, every partner can use it. But two, the partners kind of who have maybe the least amount of resources or who have, you know, the need to maybe move a little bit faster and just kind of need something out of the box, can take it, versus the partner who is very advanced to maybe move a little bit faster and just kind of need something out of the box, can take it, versus the partner who is very advanced, maybe has a full end-to-end marketing team, is able to take the parts and create their own.
Speaker 2:And again, this collateral example I gave is the perfect one, right? It already looks pretty. Fill in your content, go run. Here's where you slap your logo and have fun. Versus for a more advanced partner. Here's approved copy from Zendesk about Zendesk. How do you plug that into your own template? Mix it in with your own expertise in a more meaningful way, and off to the races.
Speaker 1:I love it, amy. Well, on this podcast, it's not just about meeting the partner where they are, but it's meeting our audience where they are too, and I like to cheat and just find the answer. So, Amy, we always ask our current guest to recommend our next guest. Who did you have in mind?
Speaker 2:Alex, you have to meet my good friend, Erica Ford. She is at Fastly. She and I used to work together once upon a time ago at K2, and she is one of the most interesting, smart, witty partner people I've ever met. I hope you get the chance to meet her.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I'm excited to get Erica on. Amy. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. It's been awesome.