Andy Yen - The Human Edge in High-Stakes Partnerships

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Andy Yen, Director of Partner Marketing for Global System Integrators at ServiceNow. Drawing on seven years at ServiceNow across ISVs, hyperscalers, and now some of the world's largest consulting firms, Andy shares what makes high-stakes partnerships work, and why the human side of the job is becoming a bigger advantage, not a smaller one.

Andy starts with what a global mindset really looks like in partner marketing. Each country has its own language, its own business culture, and the real opportunity comes from building genuine relationships market by market. He also shares how he adapts his communication style to each person, not just each persona, and why that human-first approach has helped him build trust with partners across regions. 

We also get into what makes a GSI partnership thrive. Andy describes how he builds joint value props where one plus one is greater than ten, creating the kind of stories that pull ServiceNow into deals alongside its partners. He shares how ServiceNow's industry GTM motion has opened up bigger conversations, with partners and account executives moving from product features to outcomes that resonate in the C-suite. The result is broader engagement, larger deals, and a more collaborative model across the ecosystem.

Andy closes with a reminder that feels even more relevant in the AI era: authenticity is your greatest strength, and the best partnerships are still built on real human connection.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we dive deep into the mysteries and the secrets of partnerships and the channel. I'm your host, Michelle Tole, and I'm head of marketing at Chanext. And I'm joined today by Andy Yen, Director of Partner Marketing for GSIs at ServiceNow. Andy, how are things?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Michael.

Andy’s Path Into GSI Marketing

SPEAKER_00 0:24

It's great to have you here. I'm ready to get into it. To start, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your career, your background?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yeah, sure. So my name's Andy Yen, as you guys wonderfully introduced, and I'm a director of partner marketing at ServiceNow. I currently manage some of our largest marketing relationships with our top GSIs. So GSIs are some of the biggest consulting companies in the world. So if you think of like the traditional B school path and you know the B school graduate, they uh they typically want to go work for some of these companies. And at ServiceNow, I'm working with them to embed our software into a lot of the services and offering that they deliver to their clients because a lot of them have much more broader global reach. They've got relationships in the C suite that ServiceNow traditionally hasn't had. Um, and it's been, you know, really an evolution of just kind of my career in marketing as I've kind of stepped into this role. Having been at ServiceNow for seven years now, I haven't only just covered this type of partner, right? I've also covered various other partner types working with ISBs to hyperscalers. And each of those has their own kind of separate skills and motions that you need to kind of really drive uh success for your organization. I'd say the coolest thing about my job is that I get to work and learn from senior leaders at across our ecosystem every day.

Identity And Long-Term Thinking

SPEAKER_00 1:48

That's awesome. I'm I'm really excited to dive into the complexities and benefits of working with these massive system integrators. But before that, I want to take a bit of a different approach. When we were prepping for this podcast, you mentioned that your background growing up Chinese American had a significant impact on how you look at things. And this is something I don't feel like I talk about enough on this podcast. Can you talk a little bit about your perspective and how this has influenced kind of your decisions inside and outside of your?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yeah, thanks, Michael. I'd say uh my upbringing's definitely had a profound impact on who I am today. Um I actually think it does for everyone. Uh if you look at my background here, that while we're talking, right, I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I'm a huge Michigan World Readings fan, go blow, right? But um, I I was actually the first Chinese American born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And Ann Arbor, Michigan is a small college town, but it's very global and and it's always rated one of the top public universities in the world. Um, and my dad was a professor there, right? He went there, he went over to U of M in 1980 and basically stayed there his entire career. So being around growing up in the Midwest, kind of growing up, you know, Chinese American and my dad having spent most of his career in one place, you're kind of taught to think, okay, how do I think about things in the long term? But in terms of technology, technology changes so rapidly now. And so when I kind of stepped into this space, it was a little bit uncomfortable at first. But um, you know, I had a lot of access to computers and tools and such with my dad teaching at the university. And that's naturally where my interests gravitated towards. So for me, I ended up, you know, here in Silicon Valley by pursuing my interests in technology and kind of disrupting myself a little bit in terms of like who I who I grew up as. But also um, you know, I'd like to think a lot of those values that I grew up with um have translated into building, you know, solid partnerships and and really trying to drive real value for um the stakeholders and organizations that I work with and for.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

No, no, I love hearing that. And it's fascinating to hear something like that, that long-term planning perspective, uh, especially now when it feels like technology is changing on a daily basis. My skill set and tech stack has to change on a daily basis. So uh yeah, I can imagine that that's uh that's a bit of a shift.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Absolutely, for sure.

Why Global Regions Aren’t Monoliths

SPEAKER_00 4:21

I think we all have to deal with certain backgrounds, certain assumptions when it comes to culture. Uh, I personally experienced that when doing business in in APAC, where I really had to completely rethink how to build relationships. Um, but also in the Middle East, which again requires so much, I would call it almost like cultural finesse. So, in in your perspective, what's the biggest misconception that Americans bring to the idea of like doing business globally? And how does that show up in your role in partner marketing?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yeah, sure. So I would say, you know, in partner marketing, if if you're working with global organizations, you've got to think with a global mindset. You can't just think about hitting the number for a particular region. I mean, that's absolutely important, but like you've got to think bigger picture around how that organization is structured and what their beliefs and values are, and how because it's only then that you're able to really leverage the strengths of that partner and organization to really drive success for you. And um, I'd say the biggest misconception when it comes to thinking globally um is that we often think about regions like uh the Americas, EMIA, APAC, and um each country has its own language, it's uh it's got its own business culture. Um and ultimately it's about you know working with the people from each of those individual uh countries to drive success. And so in partner marketing, often you know you can't just say, oh, I'm hosting an Emia call and try to scale and have everyone join and you know uh align to those initiatives. You've actually kind of got to go out of your way and assert yourself into some of the in-country conversations. Um and oftentimes people in in region may not be used to it, right? Because someone in you know Germany may not be used to some guy in California just reaching out and asking about a webinar. Like they're like, Why is this guy picking me? Um, but it's about show um it's about building relationships with them and showing where you can provide value. And so um, if you're able to execute at that level, it helps you actually operate at a much uh more global scale.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yeah, I I fully agree. And I think I think a lot of us and people listening as well will have run into mistakes trying these approaches. And I love that you mentioned that people see uh EMIA or APAC as a monolith. It's obviously not, but um sometimes I realize that it's even more individualistic when it comes to the countries than I expected. I um I was flying back from Stockholm a while ago, and I was sitting next to um a woman in her 70s, and we started talking, and she mentioned that she had a Dutch Swedish company that she was selling. And we were talking about culture, and I said, Look, I love I love Swedish culture. I I just it's like everything I I love about the Netherlands and more. And she said, No, no, it's not. No, Dutch people are rude. Like people from Sweden are direct, and it suddenly changed my perspective. Like I have these assumptions around these cultures from having casual conversations, but when you work there, those shifts really do occur. So when you kind of take your assumptions, leave them at the door, and uh try to try to build these relationships from the ground up.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's all about like adapting. I've definitely had to learn how to adapt my communication style, not only to like the persona that I'm speaking to, but to the person based on based on where they're from and understanding who they are more holistically as a person versus like someone who's a VP or someone who is an SVP. And that's a skill that I continue to hone and and craft, right? And um, as an introvert, it didn't come very naturally to me, but that's definitely still an area that I'm I'm building on. But I think tools like Riverside, right? Um, Zoom and Teams and all these things, right? They've enabled us to kind of connect uh with people in different ways. Um, and so that's also you know one of those things that is helpful because we, you know, while it's awesome to be meeting people all the time, it's also very exhausting to be on Zoom and in meetings all day as well.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Uh I think it's such a great point, right? Because the way we approach people, the way we build these relationships is also how we influence these partnerships. And for a large part, partner marketing is about influence, it's about enablement. So, what is building these relationships? What does this influence look like in your day-to-day? So, who are you influencing? What are you influencing? Where are you trying to move the needle?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Yeah, so I actually grew up in the world of product marketing and enterprise software. So I think like SAP, oh, cool. Um, so I think like SAP, Oracle, and that's actually what brought me to ServiceNow. And what I spent most of my time doing was trying to get in front of sales leaders, account execs, and product managers. And I wanted to build compelling content and messaging um based on what I was hearing from them and break down really technical content into everyday language that someone could that someone could use. And so I would want to bring in an elevator pitch for a sales rep to introduce a new product or solution into one of their customers. Um, and so a lot of that influence was kind of focused on what within within my own company, right? And uh in the partner world, all those skills still apply, but you have to add an entirely new company to the mix. So, like when you think of these GSIs, you know, they have got like 400,000 employees, they've got partners that need to bring in business for their firm across every industry and every sector, and they also have a dedicated practice built to help generate services and uh license revenue for you, right? So um it brings a whole different dimension to the mix. Um, but I think what I found is that when you work closely with them and when you are able to build trust, you ultimately, as a partner marketer, get one step closer to the customer. And to me, marketing has always been about being the voice of the customer, right? So um you just have to be able to build that trust with uh your not only your internal stakeholders that you know, but you also have to bring those internal stakeholders along with you to um build a joint value prop with the partner. Um and it involves all sorts of different people, right? Whether it's like a partner at one of these GSI firms, whether it's a regional alliance lead that's trying to hit their sales number in the region, whether it's a strategic events person that you have to say, hey, I want to do something with my partner here. Can we insert them? And um, what you're ultimately trying to do is uh get out of like, hey, this is another thing that I need to do uh mode and work with people to work towards North Star. And the best way to do that is to make their jobs easier and to be easy to work with.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

To be honest, it's interesting that a bit more of that long-term planning then comes into play based on how you have to interact with these GSIs, these massive organizations. Um, one thing I did notice, by the way, what you're describing almost to me sounds like account management. Um, so I'm just curious, like when and where do you insert the marketing element of partner marketing?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yeah, that's that's a great question. So I I would say when it comes to building effective partnerships with these GSIs, you've you've always got to look at the bigger picture, right? Around um why this partnership is important. And then think about like, hey, how do I build the narrative where it's like we're bringing in happy customers, we're generating lots of money, and we're having a lot of fun, right? Because like there's a lot of things around partnerships that are not exciting, right? And and my job as the marketer is to build the narrative around why one plus one is greater than two. And for me, the way that I've kind of approached that is one, I definitely work really closely with sales and my alliance leaders because I want to understand what they need to do to achieve their goals, right? But I think for me, um being the marketer and not necessarily carrying a number, um, I have more time to take a step back and think about how do I advocate for these partners without like an like an ultimatum, right? And I'm always just trying to think of unique ways where our partners can add value within what it is that we're doing within our company. I'm spending a lot of time kind of defining the north star of what we're doing, right? So one of the things that we do at ServiceNow is we not only go to go to market by product, workflow, and solution area, we also go to market by industry. And industry is a relatively newer motion at ServiceNow. And um, you know, you need to be able to speak in the language of industry uh for our customers because a lot of customers they don't care about what this little button does, right? Like, especially the C C suite leaders in your software. And so what I found is that working with industry leaders across our partners and having them embed our message into what they're doing, it's actually pulling ServiceNow into deals. And you're not actually competing internally, where your internal account executives are like, hey, why are you why are you introducing this partner to me? They're actually being pulled into deals with partners and they're realizing that they are getting, they're closing larger deals, right? And they're involved in much broader conversations beyond one module or one workflow solution that ServiceNow sells.

Getting Pulled Into Bigger Deals

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Well, that that's fascinating. It's almost like moving from voice of the customer to voice of the partner, really creating that top of mind nature from a Service Now perspective within these within these GSIs. And I think in some ways, it's obviously a mutually beneficial relationship, right? I mean, the companies that these GSIs sell to, they're looking for these types of solutions. So there's an explicit need for these kind of ecosystem plays. Um the the one thing I do wonder about like uh these GSIs work with pretty much everyone, besides building these strong relationships and positioning yourself within the GSI within the organization. Can you share some tips to the listeners for like staying top of mind when you're competing for attention within the same part?

Staying Top Of Mind With GSIs

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Yeah, that's a great uh that's a great call out, right? Because um I I think our partners work have their own ecosystems that they work with, and it can be overwhelming. Um and I think what you have to do to stay top of mind is that you just have to be really good at marketing and realize that in enterprise tech, you're either selling or you're being sold to. Um, and so I think like it's your job as the partner marketer to make who you're working with on the other side feel like they're the most important person in the room. And you don't just do that by having a meeting and having, you know, having a meeting and say, hey, we're gonna do all these things, right? You actually get on the ground, you bring in the broader re broader resources from within your organization, and you show that you're serious about taking action and going above and beyond. And I think what happens with that is that actually unlocks new opportunities and opens new doors for you within that partner. Um, because they will bring in their resources and they you you'll further amplify what you're what you're able to do. That I think a lot of it is just being able to build trust, right? And um, partnerships are a long-term game. You can't just think of them as being kind of a transactional thing that that's gonna help you hit some sort of short-term goal.

Trust Built On Real Care

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, and I think especially when you're talking about those North Stars that you're aiming towards, again, that's a that's a joint effort with the GSI. And I think if you don't have that trust, you really can't get to a cohesive endpoint. Um, and and I think honestly, I had a conversation in another podcast recording recently where we were talking about how then to actually build trust. And what we landed on was that you actually have to care about the person across from you. You can't fake it, it can't be a part of your script or your agenda. You need to generally want to know this person. Um, and I think that makes uh makes the difference between a like a quick tactical relationship and a long-term relationship that you can actually build on.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah, absolutely. Um one example I I'll bring up there is like at the end of last year, I had to go out uh due to you know family member having a big medical procedure done. And um when I went out, right, I realized that the people who I worked with genuinely cared about me as a person and beyond like what I can bring to the table, like, hey, let's get that webinar done, let's go get get a solution brief, let's go invest in this event, right? Like they they really took a step back and um and and they made me realize that they cared about me beyond just like what I can bring to the table from a business perspective. And um, I think again, you build that through just strong, uh, strong trust through in-person interactions as well as you know having regular check-ins digitally because we can't always be in person um and aligning like meetings based on people's needs, right? Understanding that things come up and and it's definitely about building trust.

AI Forces New Platform Thinking

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah, I I love that perspective. And I think that it's always a balance almost, right? Between the the job part of things that we we need to make money with each other. That's our goal, right? We need to sell great products, we need to do that together with these massive partners, and it's very complicated. But that trust relationship, that that's like a foundation that we can build on. On the other hand, you have the actual more technical side of things, and I see it now as well, right? The partner landscape is moving super rapidly. Um, whether that's technical enablement, but also completely new go-to-market place. I'm wondering, is there anything from a more technical perspective that's really changed for you in the last like 12 months when it comes to your approach in partner marketing?

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah, I guess like one of the things that I've had to become more comfortable with is that um it's okay to change your mind about what is important in a partnership. It's okay to change your mind about what like my day-to-day covers because things are changing so quickly. Um, and what I'm seeing right now is that especially with AI, is that um organization organizations are talking about business transformation, kind of like using AI is like the hammer to drive all of this change, right? But like at the end of the day, it's people that are going to be implementing it, right? People from all different aspects of the ecosystem, not just you know, the HR department, not just the IT department. It's you know, we're seeing technology being, I think what we're what we're seeing now with AI is um really much more of a demand to drive uh to drive collaboration across the enterprise um and reduce a lot of the line of business buying, right? And and it traditionally tech was implemented by IT, but today I think there are various decision makers in that process. There's people in finance, there's people in legal who have a seat at the table in these buying decisions. It's it's not an RFP done through the done through the IT director anymore. So um companies are looking to place bets on strategic platforms versus point solutions that solve one thing for people at work. Because especially as we've seen with the introduction of a lot of these LLMs, LLMs are able to solve a lot of people's individual problems. And that's brought on its own host of challenges for organizations because uh they they need to be able to govern people bringing their own AI into work, right? And so um that I think that's kind of like the next evolution of uh consolidation that we'll see in uh enterprise tech.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

I think there's there's so many interesting conversations going on around indeed bringing that personal use of AI into the workplace. Uh obviously, as a workplace, fostering efficiency powered by AI makes a lot of business sense. But then you, especially, for example, in Europe, you you have to deal with GDPR. Like what kind of company information are we gonna put into these publicly available LLMs? How do we manage that? Do we do centralized LLMs where we run the risk of a data breach or whatever? So it comes with a lot of complexities while also supporting people in doing their job like more pleasantly and more easily. I'd say that for me, I don't know what it's like for you as an ex-product marketer. I'm an ex-product marketer. I notice that all my kind of operational day-to-day stuff, I run through AI tools. But the one thing I don't run through AI tools is messaging, developing value propositions, go to market plans. You know, I sometimes have AI challenge it, but those things I'm like, this is what I've done my entire career. This is what I should be and hopefully am good at. Um so how do you push that?

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, I'm I'm 100% with you. I would say um you definitely have to learn. I mean, you definit AI has kind of infiltrated our lives. And I I'm a big believer that um you are, you know, you should learn how to use it, or you're gonna be replaced by someone who who does know how to use it well, right? But um I would say there are definitely things. that I have to stay true to in terms of like, you know, my core strengths are in positioning and messaging. And um I would say another thing that AI is not going to replace is just being able to align people to a common thing. Like um while I'll use it to, you know, summarize meetings, you know, to help drive alignment, or I'll use it to like help me proofread an email like here and there. I I'm still kind of the person driving a lot of the narrative and and navigating through all the various nuances of a partnership. I would say where AI is coming into play is just helping me up level um and and and I am using it to kind of challenge myself when when I do have some assumptions and I need to get checked in. So it's been a great tool but at the end of the day I think to drive business transformation, to drive partnerships, uh it's still very much a people uh business.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Yeah no I I I totally agree. And I think my two favorite prompts are uh am I being stupid and make this shorter? I think those are the two things I use most often. But um I I have seen a trend happening which I find fascinating and that's that more and more people who embrace AI are also emphasizing the human part of of doing business because we are still people right and we need to have that connection and we need to have those real conversations especially in the channel space and in the ecosystem space there's more emphasis on building those real relationships because everything else is becoming so automated and connected and digitalized that I I kind of find that an interesting trend.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I I'd say you know my social media today, I don't know what's real and what's not anymore a lot of the times. So I think having that in-person element and understanding and again one of the nice things about partnerships is that it's forced me to kind of connect with people not just people who are based in California but people who are based in other parts of the world and when you get to know them you really kind of get to hear what's going on versus um a lot of things that are just kind of spun up in social and all these different platforms today. So I I totally with you on the human element side.

Next Guest Picks And Authentic Closing

SPEAKER_00 24:21

I mean you can't deep deep fake a real conversation right I mean that's the thing. Speaking of real conversations uh we always ask our guests to invite or nominate the next guest on the podcast. I think you've got some interesting uh recommendations.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Uh who should we have next so yeah these uh so these two are two of the top partner marketers that I've worked with um Nishma Bhadiani is was my marketing counterpart at EY for many uh for a while and uh she taught me what elite GSI marketing looks like so I definitely recommend her. And she's based in London and uh I'd also like to recommend my colleague Jimmy Wareham. She'd be a great person to have on your show.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Fantastic well there's two more two more podcasts to talk about GSI partner marketing which is just it's so different than than channel marketing or or SMB partner marketing.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

It's such a fascinating ecosystem uh I love this hey this has been this has been great I do want to ask you to wrap this up do you have any final insights tips or tricks that you'd like to share with the audience um yeah I guess like you know uh tying to all the themes that you kind of talked about we we talked about here Michael I think authenticity is something that will never be replaced right and um early on in my career and and growing up right I always kind of felt like I needed to fit a certain mold to kind of get to where I wanted to be right if I wanted to become a marketing leader I needed to give up certain things in order to elevate myself to to the right position. And I would say um that was a misperception that I had and something that I've learned and what makes you unique and what makes you different is actually your greatest strength. And so being authentic um that's not going to be replaced by AI anytime soon. And it also is what helps you build a connection with people beyond the day to day I love it.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Yeah being authentic makes you memorable that's that that's that's absolutely great advice. Andy thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and taking the time to speak with me. And for you dear listeners thanks for tuning in and see you in the next episode