Sam Valme - The secret power of channel evangelism

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Sam Valme, Channel Evangelism Director of Americas at AvePoint. Sam has spent 13 years at AvePoint moving through solution engineering, sales, partner program design, and MSP sales leadership, building the kind of institutional knowledge that made the channel evangelism role possible. This episode is about what that role actually is, and why it matters.

Sam opens with the observation that drove the creation of his role: channel-first companies attend partner community events and understand intuitively how valuable those environments are, but no one makes it their full-time job. Everyone is focused on sales. Sam spent years making the internal case for awards ceremonies, road shows, and community activation events, always as a side activity. He eventually wrote the proposals, secured executive support, and the role became his own.

What has he learned about building that community? Two things stand out. First, the community has to serve both the go-to-market side of a partner's house and the technical side. Decisions about technology adoption often sit with engineering teams. Any community that ignores that is missing the people who determine whether new solutions actually get implemented. Second, partners consume information differently. Some engage through LinkedIn groups, some through video, some through audio, some through newsletters. The answer is not to pick one and optimize for it, but to build for all of them and meet partners where they already are.

Sam's measure of success, in year one and beyond, is influence: on pipeline, on revenue, and on new partner activation. Build it right, and the community becomes self-sustaining. That is the goal.

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Transcript

Welcome And Sam’s New Role

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we dive deep into the mysteries and the secrets of partnerships and the channel. My name is Michel, I'm head of marketing at Chanax, and I'll be your host for today. I'm really happy to chat with uh Sam Valmay, Channel Evangelism Director for the Americas at Av Point. Sam, it's great to see you for round two on the podcast, now with a brand new role that I can't wait to talk about. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I woke up this morning, so I can't complain. Very honored to be here and looking forward to discussion.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Awesome. It's a great start of the day waking up. I hear you. Um hey Sam, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and a little bit about AthPoint?

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Yeah. So I've been at AtPoint now, it's going on uh 13 years. Before that, I was actually at Dell. Before that, I was actually at Apple. So I've been in technology now for quite a long time. Um and I started off actually in solution engineering. So that I was the guy doing the demos during the sales calls. I have experience then moving into solution architecture for our organization, AppPoint. Uh, we do data security, uh, data protection software, I should say, uh, for M365 and also other major uh collaboration workspaces like Google Workspace. Uh, we do some stuff with Salesforce as well, um, and also protect things like Azure and AWS. Um, so I was building uh solutions around that for quite some time, and then I actually went back into Solution Engineering Management. And it was from there I was doing these trainings for partners, and we really didn't do a whole lot of partners, and this is like circa 2016, 2017-ish. And I started realizing I was like, some of these partners can do demos just as good as my team can of our solutions. So I asked our um VP of sales and public sector, which is when I was in, and uh our CTO at the time, and I was like, hey, could I kind of create a role around enabling partners to see if they can actually source this business? And they were like, Yeah, and Michelle, this is the first, the biggest mistake I made in my career. I agreed to a capped quota for that career, for that, uh, for that move. Because I was like, we picked the number and I was like at 250% of source revenue uh for partners. And I was like, oh my gosh, where's my Porsche? But it really opened my eyes to seeing what the channel can do at scale. And then from there, I actually had the opportunity to design our global partner program, roll out our partner portal, write the initial uh partner contracts that we have through our click-through agreements. So I understand what it means to roll out a program uh globally across an organization. We have offices um on all continents. Uh, we have we had an installation on the ISS for a while, which is our first intergalactic uh play. And then since then, I moved into the MSP space and um I oversaw the MSP sales team for about four years. And then recently I moved into the marketing side, uh, really because I found a passion for not only, of course, talking to MSPs and appreciating that space, but also really gathering folks together

From Apple And Dell To AvPoint

SPEAKER_00 2:40

and really having an opportunity to hear from them what their challenges are, and uh really being the kind of the orchestrator of those communities. And that's really the opportunity that I'm pursuing now on the marketing side.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

That's crazy. I I think it's so cool to hear to have such a like a varied career, right? And I think it always helps people to see different facets of a business because you just learn new things, but you also learn like new pain points, right? I can imagine coming from solution engineering and then into sales. Um it gives you some humility, I take it.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Yeah, yeah. It's funny. When I was on the engineering side, I used to always think like the sales, the sales team, the salesperson has the hardest job at the company because you're trying to convince, you know, we were doing public sector sales too. So, you know, we're talking about the Air Force, Lockheed Martin, right? A lot of very large organizations, as we kind of comp lump the uh some of the uh SIs into the uh uh the public sector side, you're trying to convince very large organizations that they should take uh collaboration security seriously. And depending on who you're talking to at any given level, it was very challenging to kind of have that point land in some cases. Um but on the engine, once once they got to me on the engineering side, it was easy because we could actually walk through the technology. So, yeah, being on the sales side of the house and kind of being that frontline first conversation, you really start to appreciate what it takes to sort of get somebody's attention long enough to finally see what it is that you can do. And I think that, you know, this might be a hot take, but I think everyone should do is tend in sales and be responsible for having that, for knocking on those doors and really getting that first uh conversation going and building those first partnerships because then you realize all the supporting functions, whether it's engineering, whether it's marketing, whether it's CS, they're really all just really set up well if you have that good first interaction, that good first relationship. So it is, it's humbling, um, but it also really makes you appreciate the work that it takes to start those initial relationships.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, I I definitely want to emphasize that point that everybody should feel what it's like to do a sales call, at least at one point in their life, or or do a hundred and see how many uh happy people you get out the other end of the line. It's a recurring theme, by the way. It's interesting. I I had this conversation with someone recently where I said working with and leading BDR teams as well has totally changed my perspective on outbound inside sales. And I now, if I get cold called, I will hear you out. Yeah. I might hear you out for 30 seconds or two minutes if it's interesting. I will always hear you out because I know your job is hard. So yeah, absolutely. Uh words to live by. Definitely everybody should pick up the phone, do a cold call. It it it hurts.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, I've I've I've actually I've developed that same empathy, especially because I mean I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit, and um, you know, I have folks reach out. And if there's someone that offers like a truly unique outbound, like I always at the very least will say that was good. Yeah. Right. Um, I had somebody cold call me and she got me because she asked, she said, Hey, um, I'd love to learn more about your technology services. And it was such a general question that it kind of took, I was like, Oh, is this a prospect customer? I didn't really understand. So I was like, Oh, yeah, this is what we do, yada, yada. And then she essentially got into like, well, how would you handle X, Y, and Z in this kind of situation? Essentially, she was kind of doing the discovery with me. Then eventually I realized I was like, you're trying to find an opportunity to solve these problems, not just kind of notate them. Um, and I stopped her and I was like, I'm I'm not the person I actually solved it, but that was a really unique take that you took. I had somebody else recently, they actually got sent one of my colleagues two cents on Venmo and said,

Sales Empathy And Creative Outbound

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Here's my two cents. Um and then like pitched, yada yada. But it was unique. So she replied and was like, hey, like just so you know, I'm not the person, but that was pretty good. So yeah, you have to acknowledge when people get more and more creative because it's noisy. It's noisy out there, um, and you have to be, you know, different to stand out.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah, I I agree. And I think that's something we'll probably touch on when we talk about how to build like effective partner relationships. Let me briefly jump to your new title. Obviously, we can't use channel astronaut, even though you have something on the ISS, but um I'm actually surprised that I don't see the concept of evangelism pop up more often in partner-first businesses. So I'm sure you'll be kicking off a trend soon. But I mean, if you look at the MSP relationship and go to market, it I feel it's something that really needs its own voice, uh, its own strategy, like internal advocacy. So, what gap were you trying to close when you stepped into this evangelism position?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, over the years, working on even from the program side to the sales side, I've always sort of been the one internally beating the drum on like we need to have our awards ceremony, we need to do a roadshow, we need to like do these community activation events. But it was never my full-time job. It was always just like, I know we need to do this. I know we need to do it because I see our, I don't want to say competitors, our peers doing it, other vendors, and they're very successful. And I'll be honest with you, the breakthrough uh kind of time for me to think about it was when I went to uh um, I think it's uh ConnectWise's event that's in Orlando.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Well, IT Nation.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

IT Nation. It was an IT Nation. And I sit in an IT Nation and I was looking around. And granted, they're a they're literally a community, right? But at the end of the day, ConnectWise still, you know, is as is in the background. And I was looking around and I was like, you know, we can do this. We can we can put this together. I was like, if I can run a roadshow for three years around the country, right? Like if we have from looking at our revenue cap and thinking about how much revenue we bring in compared to some of the other folks that have larger conferences, I'm like, we can do this. We just it's just no one's a full-time job because everyone's focused on sales. That's how we've hit. I mean, we've it's publicly traded, so you can check online, but it's like over at this point, probably 20 quarters of year over year growth, a quarter over quarter growth. We're a very sales focused organization. So it's really identifying that and then convincing, frankly, our executive leadership team that, hey, this is something we want to invest in. And I'm very fortunate that I wrote up Lord knows how many uh proposals to my my sales manager. Um, of course, there's always the challenge of like, well, who's gonna do your job, bro, if you leave? We we ended up investing in another sales leader to come in. So I was like, great, this is the opportunity for us to do it. And our uh our CMO slash chief strategy officer was like, yeah, I want to invest in it. So, you know, phase number one is simply to kind of build the kind of the core community group and then eventually expand that out more and more. And uh, you know, even planning to do larger partner focused conferences, even as even as early as next year, as opposed to come to smaller roadshows. So it takes somebody being willing to raise their hand. And then it also takes, if I'm really being honest, somebody that the business trusts to give them the rope for, and when I talked to our our chief strategy officer, he was like, Hey man, this is gonna be like three to four years to build this up. These communities do not happen overnight. And I was like, Yeah, I know. I like doing hard things. And he was like, Great, everyone that works for me does hard things. So they had the trust in me to try it out to establish it. So I have a I think the other, the other thing that kind of gave me a leg up too was I had I know our technology. I've been here for a long time. And also I ran the say I ran the MSP sales team, so I know all the MSPs. So I don't have to like go out and do a you know show to gain their trust to show up to these things. So I think all those things kind of worked together. But I'll be honest with you, Michelle, as I'm as I'm talking to you know some of my own peers in the marketing team, I look around and I say, it would be very, very hard to do what I'm doing if you were to just to be net new to a company. So going to your core question of why don't we see more evangelists popping up, it really takes a lot of stars aligning for the business to give an employee, you know, three to four years of rope to be able to go out and build that community, um, not necessarily from scratch, but to really invest in it. So that's the reason why I think it's gonna be uh quite some time if this ever becomes mainstream.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

No, I think that's an awesome answer. And I think it also aligns with core strategies of a business, if you think about it, right? So if you look at partnerships, you can always say that, oh, we're building long-term relationships and then not really practice what you preach, right? Only do like last mile, pulling in a partner to sign a contract, et cetera. But when they work with you on a role like this, right, when they allow you this runway, that is really kind of practicing what you preach, right? It's seeing that relationships

Why Channel Evangelism Needs Runway

SPEAKER_01 10:25

take time to build, which means a community built up out of a relationship takes time to build as well. But the value at the end of that change should be exponential, right? Especially if you're the first person really doing this, where building up a community, like people are going to feel more engaged through what you're doing than they are with the competition colleagues at other companies. And I think you raised a really good point where I think a lot of companies would want to do this, but they are scared to pull people away from the the more tactical sales angle of things. Oh, how are we gonna fill this gap? Where is this money gonna come from? But at the end of the day, isn't that the question we all have with every partnership? At the beginning, you don't know really really what's gonna happen, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

So it's it's it's a it's a I've seen it now, and I think the benefit of being in channel and being in the community is I get to talk to other peers who have designed partner programs, who have run sales teams that do marketing. And there is always that challenge of, you know, both our companies can in fact provide unique value that put together will be multiplicative to the customer to partner, whatever. But kind of like a romantic relationship, there is probably, and my wife may hate me saying this, there's probably, you know, a billion people on the planet out of billions that you could probably have a life with. But it's not always about are you compatible? It's about right place, right time. So that's the real hard part about uh channel partnerships in general, especially the explosive ones, because there are thousands and thousands of MSPs that you could work with that probably need your solution. But it's is it the right time in their business? Is it the right person? Are they in the right mindset to really invest? And I know it because when we have to buy technology, we have to adopt new tools. I see it internally, where like this tool clearly is good, but like the leadership mindset or the focus is is not right there for us to really dive in and give this our full attention. So you really do have to be patient and also have the infrastructure to make it as easy as possible to adopt and to have that champion at that partner really um kind of beating the drum on your behalf. So it's challenging.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

I love that parallel, by the way, between how internal tech acquisition processes go and how these obviously map on to the flip side as well. I think there's a bit of a paradox there. As we become more transparent in how we build relationships, we're also more transparent about our tech. I hear from companies every single day that they really only sell what they have. It's no longer like 10 years ago or 15 years ago where everybody did everything, right? Every platform was true SAS multi-tenant, everything solved every problem and connected with every other system. Yeah. I don't think we do that anymore. We're we're much more honest about that. But I think there is still a step to be had. And I wonder if it's possible where we become truly honest about these relationships, where we can say, look, now's not the right time. This is not the moment for my budget. I've got a manager who doesn't really like your font on your website, right? To be really transparent about how we fill in those relationships. And I think if we do that, then we'll also be become far more predictable, right? From a relationship and revenue perspective. Yep. No, yeah, absolutely. Anyway, a little bit of a tangent, but um what I think is interesting about your background is is obviously you have so much knowledge about how to build the channel. Also, the sales engineering size and the sales leadership side, all of this has to have an impact on how you see partnerships. But how does your background in sales combined with sales engineering kind of shape the way uh you're building your partner program now?

SPEAKER_00 13:54

It's actually, it's my initial response is it actually causes a lot of conflict because you want to you want to create a community that can satisfy all walks, right? Because I know at the end of the day, anytime you talk to a technology-focused business, business decisions live or die by the engineering team, right? Because at the end of the day, if they can't implement it or they don't have time for it, or they don't have whatever, doesn't matter what the CEO says, chief strategy, it doesn't matter really. Just if the CTO in down can't do it. So any community that you developed innately has to be, has to cater to that group in some way because it has to hear their real challenges if you really want to make a motion. But that being said, you also have to cater to the folks that are responsible for the go-to-market motion. Because they, and that's not always the sales team. Often it's not the sales team that are responsible for the go-to market motion. Sometimes it's the marketing organization, sometimes it is the executive leadership team. Sometimes it's the uh it's the PMO. They're the ones that because they have to execute all this stuff, so they actually decide what we can and can't take on. So you have to build a community that is specific to, hey, we hear you on what the technology needs to do, but simultaneously also when it comes to actually choosing what you execute on next, which what service you actually expand on next, you have to make sure that you're also serving that group. So my background off is an appreciation for making sure that you don't silence one of those two voices. So for our community, as an example, we made the decision that it's going to be go-to-market focused, right? So we're really focusing on that go-to-market side of the house. However, we also have a number of different systems like MBS surveys that we send out. We have what's called channel innovates that's technology focused. We're kind of dabbling with the idea of doing a tech-focused boot camp for one of our appreciation events. While our community's core might be for those that are really responsible for identifying the go-to-market motions and making sure we're overcoming those challenges, we create a lot of opportunities for us to still get that tech feedback because you want, for lack of a better word, your stands in the building that really love what it is that you're doing and can overcome some of those challenges. They might be talking about the font on this page. They might be talking about the character, the fact it needs to be, you know, 16 long character versus short character field box. But they're also the ones that when it comes to QAing or doing a phase one beta of a new solution, they're gonna give you pages and pages of feedback, not only on what your technology can do, but also compared to what they've seen your competitors doing probably too. So as long as you are creating an opportunity for both of those sides to be heard, I think that you're gonna be uh see some level of success. And then also, and we recently talked about even the format of communication when it comes to building a community. There is kind of this idea that, like, oh, well, we have to figure out what's the platform gonna be, just as an extreme example. Is it gonna be a Facebook group? Is it gonna be a WhatsApp chat? Is it gonna be a LinkedIn community? But what we found is uh after doing some research and talking to some consultants, is it's less about the actual community that you think is easiest for you to maintain internally. And it's more about where your partners today. And it's also an appreciation for it, doesn't matter what you choose because there's only gonna be a subset of community that listens that way. So if you choose LinkedIn groups as an example, great. You might out of your 100% of the pie get 30% of the folks that are in your community on a LinkedIn group actively engaging, right? The other 20% might actually only really watch videos because they're the YouTube generation. So they need to have any updates sent via video. Some folks are the voice chat people that just want to hear like sound bites, right? Almost like podcasts that are being done, right? And then the other folks are written. They just want to see things kind of written out in a newsletter. So the answer with you know, uh, all that is you have to do all of it. You really got to be available to everything. So I think that going back to the core of the question, you know, my background really helps me appreciate that you got to cater to the sales and the go-to-market side, but you also have to come to where people are and make sure that your communication is how they like to receive it. And that's how you really make sure your community isn't just speaking to one audience in one way, but it's accessible, um, you know, 360.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I have to be honest, I my bias led me to assume a very different answer than you were going to give, which I think is fascinating. Because I I thought you were going to say, okay, we focus on this, and that's why we put our resources in that. And the people in the other groups, the people that want the voice messages, you know, we can't focus on that. But I I love hearing this because what you're basically saying is our priority is everyone. And I think that's essential when you're talking about building a community, even though it's a specific community, you still need to indeed cater to the needs of the individuals within that community. And

Serving Tech And Go To Market

SPEAKER_01 18:35

what I also loved about what you just said is that basically technology is where trust starts in these organizations. Like if you don't have the tech, then then nothing else works. You can have the best relationships you want, but if if your tech doesn't work, you really won't go anywhere. And building out that foundation, I think a lot of companies honestly have a blind spot there when it comes to building relationships, that they think it's really about the sales focus, the revenue KPIs, et cetera, and not about, hey, do we have tech that is harmonious with the proposition that these companies, that these partners are pushing to their end customers, right? How does it fit into the ecosystem? How does it scale? How does it align with trends, et cetera? So I think that's a really nice emphasis to hit on just for the audience. Like, really don't ignore the tech people in your partner organizations.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah, and be specific when you're uh when you're down that level. And don't be afraid of uh telling them no. I'll give you an example. We had uh actually it was around this time last year, one of our largest partners came to us and we actually had an opportunity to sit down one-on-one with our team and say, hey, why aren't you adopting this new uh this new solution that we rolled out? We rolled it out like the week before the week before. We're like, hey, why wouldn't you use this? We just we just launched it. Chop chop. And if we're like, well, yeah, exactly, right? They were like, uh, well, the answer is because it needs to integrate with ServiceNow. And so that's a dangerous answer because if we just took that, ServiceNow has an app catalog. We just need to build a ServiceNow catalog, right? Application hook in, and then they'll use it. Great. I'm sure, I'm sure a lot of our other partners use ServiceNow when they hit their size. So this would be useful to everybody. But the more that we actually kind of dug in, well, why specifically ServiceNow? What specifically does the what does it need to do? We realized what they weren't looking for was necessarily a ServiceNow hook-in. They were looking for an open API, which is a very different thing to develop, but also it's infinitely more useful. So we were like, oh, well, that's actually a good idea. So not only did we build the open API for that one particular partner, but then we were able to kind of backlog it into our entire platform. So now you can go to the site and actually have a lot of different API sets, and now it's part of our development cycle. So instead of us having to maintain this ServiceNow hook in, we can just keep our open API up to date with the features of our technology. And then their team can then go ahead and take those APIs and build their own little application, custom to them, because that's always gonna be changing too. So it's just really important to be able to have those sit downs. But then also, if I'm really being honest too, you have to have a team that's willing to say, you know what, we're gonna go ahead and take that project on because we see the revenue on the other side. And we ended up closing the deal. But it really is a lot of confidence that the uh product team needs to have with that. Well, at the time I was on the sales team, but needs to have with that group getting the feedback to really and make those investments.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Yeah, I I love that. These types of stories get me so excited because there's two things about it, right? One, it's um being honest as an organization, uh, not just responding to everything, but thinking about it. And the second is seeing a relationship with a with a customer or prospect like this as um as an actual relationship where it goes both ways, where you can ask questions and and be open and figure out better, uh a better road to Rome, so to speak. And I I I gotta say, I've had a situation like this. I was at a a company, rapid scale up, was about to be acquired, and we were working on our biggest enterprise deal. It was like eight figures, it was crazy. We'd never done anything like it. Really complicated software. So we did bigger big deals deals in general, but When we got the spec sheet, in what we had to do, I remember that the co-founder he walked into my office and he said, Um, yeah, you need to uh figure out how we do ETL. And I said, What's ETL? And he said, I don't know. We said together ETL is uh extract transform load, and it was basically a way of getting old data out of an old system into the new system in a way that actually matched the fields. We had no idea, but we took that as kind of an adventure, like, okay, we're gonna figure out how to do this, but we're not going to figure out how to do this for just this prospect. We're gonna bake it into the system because there's no way no one else is going to ask us how to do this. And I don't know, this kind of stuff gets me excited, right? Where you sit down and say, this is not a game bear game-breaking challenge, and this might be more than what we're actually being asked to do right now, but it'll well, I don't know, lay the golden egg in the future, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Yeah, because if you're gonna do it, do it. Just do the entire thing. It makes your life a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Exactly. And and then if you don't have a capped quota, then there's no issue, right? You can just build all that.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Right. Then we all drive away in our GT3s and call it in.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Exactly. Yeah, it sounds great. There's what one thing, another parallel I heard in what you were talking about is like you have that tech and go-to-market balance, but you also, I think in in evangelism, you have a balance between, let's say, exploration and accountability. So channel sales and marketing, they often have pretty clear KPIs and metrics, but for you, it's probably a bit different. So, in building this community, how do you measure success?

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Start it, have a meeting. I'm not even kidding. Like it's it's it's this is the benefit. This is this is this is my my secret, my career secret. If anybody wants the secret to be me successful, when you when you create your own job, anything you do was probably better than what came before it. If you do anything, right? Because it didn't exist. Um, but in all seriousness, right? So we yeah, the marketing team has a very um mature um OKR model, right? So I developed OKRs, and actually three out of the five were to establish one of our peer groups is to establish our um our kind of that go-to-market model that we have for those partnerships, and to establish a community activation for the broad broad scale. It is literally to get it started. And then because we don't have a way of measuring engagement at all, you then have to run it probably for another six months. So I wouldn't imagine, I'm not really gonna get any hard numbers as far as like, hey, hit this target, probably until the beginning of next year. However, we also wouldn't have had at that point two, one executive one executive peer group, one one a community champions group for all intents and purposes. I don't want to spoil it too much, and then a another uh method to kind of talk to the long tail of our partners as well. We wouldn't have had that had I not started. The other two components that are my OKRs are actually supporting all the campaigns that we develop that are channel focused. So doing promotion, physically attending, hosting,

Partner Feedback That Improves Product

SPEAKER_00 24:55

that sort of thing. And then the events that we're doing as well. So that one's actually more on the, I should say, the attending, a hosting sort of piece too, because we do uh channel activations and we're also, of course, pushing for that sort of larger channel event. So much of my focus this year is creation. And that's kind of been my you know passion for the company in a while is I have a I like to think I have a very entrepreneurial spirit. And there's nothing better than being an entrepreneur with someone else's money. So uh this is essentially my opportunity to sort of continue that trend and build something that didn't exist. And you know, out of the five things that I'm trying to do, two are kind of already in eight, it's already working. And you know, if I get two out of the three done in the year one, hey, we didn't have anything. So yeah, that's kind of how we're starting things off.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

I fully agree. I think um there's a lot of value for companies to view uh OKRs maybe a bit more flexibly, dependent on what your purview is, right? Not everything has to be directly quantitative, some things should be qualitative because it gives you um, I would almost say like breathing room to be creative. Oh yeah. And to fail. Where uh whereas if if you're focusing I don't know, if you like uh the the office US. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, there's there's a scene where one of the salespeople he finds out that his commission plan has been changed from uncapped to capped, and he literally says, You realize that this takes away my incentive to work, right? Yeah, yeah. And but the whole point of that is that if there's nothing around this, if that's the only thing you're focusing on, everything else will feel mundane, right? Why would you do anything but hitting that number if that's your goal? Whereas if you have those more uh qualitative goals to support that, there are things where you can sit back and say, I'm hitting my number, that's awesome. How do I build out this vibe? You know, how do I create a long-term program? What does that mean to me? Who do I engage with? And I think that's just a really cool perspective to have. And also, again, like the freedom that you're getting to do this is I think is super valuable and will lead to a stronger end result.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah, it's like I said, and that's why I I go back to. I can see why this role will be challenging for a lot of organizations, especially to hire for, right? Because you have to have functionally a mastery over um the technology and kind of the product market fit. You have to have the confidence, even to do stuff like this, to be able to go and kind of talk on behalf of the organization. That takes a long time to establish trust at it. Because any ISV, it's not like you know, you're going to Microsoft or AWS or Dell or anywhere there's like public certifications where you can literally walk off the street and say, I'm an expert in your tool set. No, you can't be an expert in At Points Technology unless you work here or you use the technology in your day-to-day job. I mean, even if you use it, you're still only using a subset of it. So it's a it's a challenging uh division. But I think that what's challenging is getting it started, right? Anything that I build at this company, kind of the mark, if you've ever seen a Hamilton at one point where it's like President George Washington send-off, is he he says, I want to build something that's gonna outlive me, right? So sort of the kind of the reignition of the engineering team when I took it over and kind of my partner that we were I was working with there, seeing parts of that still alive, obviously the partner program and the portal itself, seeing that still living. And even this, I'm probably not gonna do this at this company forever. But my hope is that I build a community foundation and structure that maybe even after I step away for two or three years, I can look at it, squint a little bit, and say, ah, I see part of what I was able to set up there, still there. So that's really what I'm looking to build is something that is is it has enough rigor to subsist without me. And I always, you know, I'm always cognizant of not falling into the trap of me, Sam, being the community and me being the face of me, like needing to exist for it to continue to move. And I've seen a lot of you know, communities like that, be it in sales or just in general, that once that sort of face leaves, it's like, well, I was only really here for him. I wasn't actually here for something else. So you got to make sure you're constantly building something that people are coming to, that it's not just you to come hang out and have a good time.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Yeah, I I think that also requires quite a bit of humility in that sense, right? That you don't keep your your your best ideas close to the chest, but that you that you basically share that love. And I think that's the legacy you create, right? In a program like this, the program should be working. It shouldn't be just you that's working.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, I'll even take this podcast as an example, right? You all spun it up now and it's kind of changed hands, but it was, frankly, I'll use myself as the same, it's so well done before that I had a lot of confidence. And I was like, even if it's completely different face, I know I trust that system and that brand that it's going to continue to be a high quality, which clearly, not to pat you on the back too preemptively, but I think it's going pretty well. So um, yeah, like I agree. Yeah, once you have that trust, it's it doesn't matter who's the face of it. You can change the face, change everything. You know, and you see people out there's like not sure if folks like follow Dave Ramsey, right? He made a decision to kind of have his his voice not be the only one now and kind of having different faces on there too to kind of carry that once he chooses to step away. So I think a lot of folks um that are in these kind of more public roles or community-driven roles really want to make sure that it's not just them that has it on their shoulders. So you have to invest in uh building that out.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yeah, and and even even with that, it's still cool to be that to be that guy that that kicked this off, right? That kicked this trend off. So and we'll remember. We'll remember. So speaking of the future, by the way, I just want to have one more question for you. How do you see channel evangelism evolving over the next few years?

SPEAKER_00 30:23

I think that you are I well, I shouldn't say you are, I should say, but here's what I hope to see. I hope to see organizations that call themselves channel first realize that if they want to be active in these communities, it is somebody's job to be uh in the community, right? It's not, you don't build consistency working with these communities by just sending one person to this event here, one person that event there. There needs to be that investment, that consistent sort of how we show up, what it is that we're saying, right? We need to make sure that we're investing in partner appreciation. We need to invest in thank you to our partners, right? I think that when more

OKRs, Influence, And Proving Impact

SPEAKER_00 31:05

organizations see the value in showing up consistently and saying thank you consistently, you'll realize that they'll realize that you need to invest in evangelism because really what you're investing is in is a not to be not to be uh what is it called, cliche, but you're investing in like friendship. Like you need to realize that like investing in kind, friendly people is important, and they are often the first people that uh make a first impression in your organization. You know, you really want, I strictly believe that people really want to work with people that they like. And if your first impression is, you know, hey, we're doing this appreciation event. I did one um for a commander's game last year, and it was in partnership with Ingram Micro. And out of like the 19 partners that were there, I think 17 were new to us. And the first impression they got with us was just hanging out, having a beer, eating some food, watching the game. We didn't have a pitch. There was nothing about our technology. They knew we did data protection, but that was really just their first impression. And then during the conference, we actually set a one-on-one meetings and got into more of the business stuff. And I think that's such a more um natural experience to, you know, meet somebody out at a park or at a library or whatever it is, or at the grocery store, strike up a conversation, maybe say, hey, you know, I'd like to hang out with you a little bit more. And then, you know, whether we're talking business or whatever relationship, whatever it might be, then you get into more of the specifics. It's a much more natural way that we experience relationships in our personal lives. And I think that translates to business. And I hope that organizations realize that we need to sort of mirror these two things and build relationships naturally, just like you'd like to experience a relationship too. And that takes in the corporate world a lot of investment, a lot of time to kind of build that out. So that's what I hope. It's kind of like a really soft answer, but I really don't think a lot of people are gonna spin up um evangelism programs. I think a lot of people are are uh sales focused and revenue focused and they're just gonna do things the hard way. And uh, but I I do hope to see it in the future, though.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Yeah, I I love it. I I I think I keep repeating myself in all these recordings where I'm like, oh, it's almost like people want to be treated like people, you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

I mean most of the time. Like most mostly. Not every day, but mostly, I would say, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

No, 100%. And and honestly, uh I spent some time working in uh Asia Pacific, so in Singapore, and there you you really do learn to kind of leave your assumptions at the door about how to do business and and building those relationships up front. That's like the meat of it. Like being a real person. And then at the end, the business part goes really quickly.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Yeah, I think it's an American, I do think it's an American thing to a to a point, because you'll see it in even in our pop culture where there are scenes where it's like somebody comes to like do a deal and like there's somebody not the American that's like, hey, sit down, have a drink. How are your kids doing? Are you married? Like, having and the Americans like frustrated, like, when are we gonna talk about the deal? And the guy's like, Oh, you unsophisticated swine. Like it's like it's one of those things where it's like, you know, we we we always want to just kind of move on to the next thing, we only have 30 minutes, we got to get to the business quickly. But you realize that that transactional approach doesn't sustain. Um, got Lord knows how many books there are been written about it, but I think that that pressure comes from we have to grow quarter over quarter, we have to hit our forecasts, we have to do that, we don't have time to be nice in some cases. And that's why I think you have to separate. They have to be a separate motion. You have to have sales be sales, you have to have, and you have to have the, frankly, even marketing that supports sales be its own thing. And then you have to have this thing on the on the side that is just this constant ever flowing. Like we're just trying to keep the vibes, right? We don't have a number. We're trying to keep the the opportunities to have the more relaxed environment to really build those relationships. And then you better damn sure you make sure you you have good attribution so that they can say that that event influenced that revenue or influenced that pipeline later on. That way you can justify it to your CFO to get renewed on your in your new role.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Yeah, exactly. It can't all just be hugs and calayas, right? No.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Let's let's let's cut let's cut cut the bowl. I track influence revenue. I tag I track the influence pipeline, right? Like we make sure that we have attribution to our events. And then ultimately, if I'm being really, really honest, how this role sustains is how much, how much pipeline, how much uh revenue I would say, did you influence from existing partners? How much pipeline did you influence, right? But did you touch? And then from the campaigns that are being run, the activities, right? These events where we're meeting, you know, those 17 net new partners, how many can we source pack and say they did zero with us? They did something with us, so we can say we activated that a partner too. We helped uh source a partner too. Because uh influence pipeline, influence revenue, and sourced partnerships are really those three things that you can actually track with good attribution. And that way, when they're looking at your salary on a line item, there's some number to go back to and be like, they did touch all that stuff even in the first year. Let's we'll let it ride for now, right? Until eventually those communities become so developed that it's overwhelming that you're like, we can't get rid of this. Look how much they're stored, look how much they're influencing, right? So you have to always be cognizant of those numbers too.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Yeah, and I think it's inherent. Like I it's easy for organizations to say, you can't directly measure the causal link between X and Y, right? So it must not matter. But on the other hand, you know, private clubs do exist. Yeah. And private clubs are where you do the actual deals, where you lay connections. And what are we gonna do? We're gonna measure that now. So I I think, yeah, being a bit softer around this, but understanding the value of building sustainable kind of how would you almost say this, like macro relationships

The Future Plus Career Advice

SPEAKER_01 36:45

almost? Yeah. I think it's a super smart approach. And and again, like it's a force multiplier between sales and partnerships and then having this on the side, pushing everything up. I think it's a brilliant approach.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Yeah, it's um it's thanks. I like to think so. So but we can do this again in a year after I finish my first year of OKRs.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

I just see you crying or smiling. We'll see what happens. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

And I'd be like, hey, I may have myself a new job. Last one didn't work out. Yeah, so we'll see. I'm confident.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

No, I love it. I I'm uh I'm I'm super confident because I think these types of approaches really can move the needle in a serious way. So I'm really I appreciate you sharing this. Speaking of sharing, we always ask our guests to nominate the next guest on this podcast. So tell me, who should I share the love with next?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yeah, I think that uh if you're you know your podcast is obviously open to all and channel and partnerships. And I think that the an individual that I've seen not only helped educate me on a very specific industry trend that we have here, it's mostly in the U.S. called CMMC, was a guy by the name of Scott Edwards, and he's the CEO of uh Summit 7. He has a great podcast studio set up. Um but also when it comes to partnerships, he says something that he actually learned that he's kind of repeated even to me. He said, you know, uh he had a business mentor early in his career say, if you can't be number one and number two in a vertical, get out of that vertical and find somewhere you can be number one and number two. And he's really built that out for himself, and a lot of that has to do with being very focused on the partners that he works with, but also being very focused on where his business does as well and saying no to things that fall outside of that. So I think that he's somebody you should definitely uh have on for a chat. And um, yeah, I think it'd be a good discussion.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

I love that. I I think I fully agree. You can't be everything to everyone, so you really know gotta know where your market is, where it's to live by. Hey, Sam, this has been incredible. To wrap this up, do you have any final insights, tips, or tricks you'd like to share with me or the audience?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

I have to say if somebody says to you, hey, what do you want to do next, never shrug your shoulders and say, I'll just do whatever the business needs. Because you're putting your your fate in somebody else's hands. And more often than not, what I've found is that what they choose for you is actually not what you want to do. So whenever you're asked that question, or

Next Guest Nomination And Closing

SPEAKER_00 39:05

if you don't if you're not asked that question, you know, you should not be thinking about it. How can you make a big impact on an organization or, you know, a change? And don't wait until your back's in the corner and kind of wave, raise your wave your hand and say, no, no, no, but I can do it. Be proactive. Um, and I made a post a couple uh months ago at this point about this role. And I went back on my LinkedIn and I think I forget the exact numbers, but like I've had like eight roles, titles at Av Point. And I think that six didn't exist before I raised my hand and said, Hey, I think we can do this, right? Or it was a new team or something like that, too. So always be thinking about what you can do next and don't wait until your back's against the wall. Constantly be championing that internally, be your biggest advocate for what you want to do next. Always be a channel astronaut. Always be a channel astronaut. Get yourself onto the ISS or maybe the new moon base, man. It's crazy. I was watching Man uh For All Mankind, and I told him what I was like, they're actually out here doing it.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

Exactly. We're getting there. Uh reality is stranger than fiction. Hey, I love it. Sam, this has been amazing. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and taking the time to speak with me. And uh for you, dear listeners, thanks for tuning in and see you in the next episode. Thanks, Sam. Thank you.