56: Unleashing Partner Tech- Greg Portnoy

It’s time to level up, partner pros! Greg Portnoy brings the heat to today’s episode. 

Greg says partner pros need to stop complaining and start adding value. It doesn’t do any good for partner pros to complain about lack of funding. 

Greg emphasizes that partner pros need to start tracking metrics that matter. Instead of whining about how partnerships are underappreciated, Greg says we need to show ‘em the numbers.

So grab your cowboy hats and saddle up for a conversation with Greg Portnoy on Howdy Partners!

Highlights
01:52 The most important things in partnerships
10:23 What are people getting wrong today in partnerships#?
13:39 Partnership pros need to take responsibility#
15:02 Track partner metrics
15:47 Focus on the science of partnerships
16:54 Show ‘em your value
18:21 Don't measure partnerships the same as sales
20:40 Meet your customers where they are
24:06 The hard truth about partnerships and tech
25:02 Partner tech is a tool, not a source of truth
29:04 Don't use partner tools in a silo
30:04 Do your tools give you leverage?
30:41 Do your tools help you measure?

Transcript

Will Taylor: 0:05

Howdy partners, and welcome to another episode of the Howdy Partners podcast, where we give you tactical insights so that you can execute in your role and produce revenue. Today I'm joined with an expert in the industry who has traditionally been a little bit more quiet, but you're getting out there a lot more. And I am solo today. I am only one person, one host. This is a rare occurrence on the show, but It must be done. Ben actually had his wisdom teeth removed and Tom had to attend to his family. So both of those, very much important. But here I am, I don't have a family, and I already have my wisdom teeth out. So just you and me. Greg. Greg, welcome to the show. Introduce yourself so that the guests know a little bit more about you and what we're gonna be talking about today.

Greg Portnoy: 0:53

Yeah, thanks for having me. Will, I'm, I'm excited to be here. So I've been building partner programs for the last 10 years in SaaS and agency world predominantly within MarTech and e-commerce, but I have built four partner programs, three of those from the ground up. In total generating over$30 million from partnerships. Super, super passionate about partnerships. I'm now building some new partner tech and just really excited to talk about my favorite topic today.

Will Taylor: 1:20

Today we're talking about the fundamentals of building partner programs from the ground up. You've built four of them, so you are definitely an expert on this. And then also partner tech, again, also an expert. You're building your own and you've probably used just about every tech under the sun, or at least know some of the good, some of the bad, and some of the ugly. So, Greg, you have built four programs, and what I wanna dive into first is what you think the core three to four fundamentals are when building any program. What did you build over and over again that was critical in your success?

Greg Portnoy: 1:53

Yeah. And I'll be transparent. These are both things that I did correctly and things that I did incorrectly. A lot of this will be learnings from both sides of that coin. I, I will never sit here and say that I got it all. Right the first time. Anybody that does, I mean, they're either incredible or they're lying. But I would say the the most important things I, so I, I did a bunch of consulting and advisory work on partnerships, which led me to the opportunity of building the partner tech. And I would say that the biggest mistake I. I think that almost every business makes that doesn't do partnerships successfully. And you know, as we all know, the vast majority of partner programs fail and the rest of them generally underperform. And that's because they don't take the time upfront to really establish kind of the what, the why and the how of partnerships. They don't think about. Like, what are we going to build? Why are we even doing it? You know, everyone talks about this, but it really is building a business within a business partnerships. Everyone knows that the best way to build a business is to start with why, you know the whole apple ideology. And most people just do it because they say, oh, well our competitors have partnerships, or we want more revenue, and we've heard the partnerships can generate it, so let's go do it. And yeah, those are great reasons to do it per se, but they're not in and of themselves. A guiding light for how and what partnership is gonna do for your business. You need to think about how partnerships work. You need to understand like why they're important to your business. And then, and, and I think this is probably something that's come up a lot, you need to get alignment and agreement from the rest of the organization on what they're going to do to support partnerships. I mean, you know, Jared talks about this all the time. This is clearly a big. Ideology around Near Bound is, it's like partnerships is not just the partnerships team. Partnerships is the entire organization because not only does it raise all the ships within the organization, it helps customer support and customer success and product and marketing and sales, but it also actually drives. Outcomes for all of those groups, and it requires all of those groups to participate. Partnerships doesn't, unless you have a massive partner org that has its own operations and its own marketing and its own integrations, engineers, and all this and none the other, you're gonna need everybody. You know, it takes a village to do partnerships successfully. So getting that alignment, thinking through that, having that discussion early on within your business, and making sure that everybody's bought in and understands. Their role in making partnerships successful before you ever do a single partnership. That's the number one thing. That's always the number one thing, and that's the thing that the vast majority of businesses will get wrong. And it's, it's just a fact, unfortunately because it's a lot of upfront work, but you wanna do it successfully. You want to do it scalably. You want to build a lasting world-class partner program. That's what it's gonna take. Once you've overcome that first initial massive hurdle then it's the thing that everybody else is constantly talking about. And again, people talk about, but don't invest enough thought and time into which is that what value can we provide to partners and their customers? You know, like, Fortunately now, like the whole idea of give to get in partnerships was not that common long, not that long ago. You know? I, I was very fortunate. I, I think I probably should have said this earlier. I was very fortunate to learn from a guy named Ryan Merton. My first role in partnerships was from someone that just got it, and everything was about driving value for partners and their customers. Everything was about internal alignment, partnering internally as much as externally, and everything was about process and data. Those are all the key tenets. And so now everyone's talking about the gift to get driving value for partners. But again, it's one thing to talk about and it's another thing to actually have that internal alignment conversation and say, Hey, product, hey marketing, hey sales, hey, customer success, we're gonna have to give to partners to get, and this is how you're gonna participate in that. So, so having that conversation and figuring that out early, really important. Next, I would say measure And this goes back to the whole process and data ideology of you can't scale if you don't know what's working and what's not working. You know, like is it possible to scale without that? Yes. But only because you got absolutely lucky and just happen to get the, get it right the first time. So unless you think that you're gonna be that one in a thousand that gets it right the first time. Measure everything. Track everything. Optimize Everything. And then iterate, iterate, iterate on that. And the added benefit of doing that is if you, and you're gonna hear this a lot in my talk in our conversation, I mean, that if you measure everything, it doesn't just benefit you internally as the partnerships team, but it gives you a, a much easier ability to actually communicate. Your impact on the business to the rest of the business Because let's be honest, like that's why partnerships, people have been getting laid off at a higher rate than other their functional areas. Because when it comes down to it, people look at partnerships and they say, I don't really get it. I don't know really understand what you guys do over there. I don't really understand the impact that you're driving for the business. And that's not a new thing. It's just obviously being felt more now because everyone's having a belt tightening and when that happens, if people don't get what value you add, you're out. But that's always been a question. And so measuring everything and being able to communicate that to the other functional leaders, to the C-suite, to the investors, that's massive. And if you're already measuring everything so that you can run a good program, then that's just a reformatting of the information you already have for a different audience.

Will Taylor: 7:32

Amazing. So I hope people were taking notes, but I will summarize. You said find that why. So what is the actual reason that the program exists in the first place? Why is your business doing it? Why do you need it? And why is it not just that your competitors have it? It's, it drives value for our customers. The other part was that you need that internal buy-in. You need to have everyone moving in that same direction because like we all know, partnerships require resources and it requires a lot of resources, different types of resources. And if you're the partner manager and you're trying to do all of that alone, you're gonna get burnt out and probably either want to leave or you will be spread so thin that You don't perform and then you get let go as well. The gift to get as well. What is your business value that you can give to the partners and the customers? That is one that I'm really glad it started to become more of a trend, because for me, when I got into partnerships, I was like, this is just. So easy,'cause I was trying to give so much, I was trying to focus on the other person. What do they want? What does their audience want? What do their customers want and how can I give them that or a version of that. And so it was kind of baffling to me that it was, it was not as common knowledge'cause I was doing it and I was like, oh, this, this is easy. I love this. And then of course, that last part, that's actually one that I wish I had done more of personally, is measuring that data. I'm becoming Obsessed with data and attribution and tracking and what are the levers to pull. So I really hope that people take note on that because you know, there was that success of last year in the partnerships world and success meaning so much buzz around it because there was that feel good. Piece, you know, you mentioned Greg, the the give to get and that feels great to talk about and everybody can rah rah behind that. But if you're not measuring, then you're not going to get that buy-in. And of course like you just mentioned, that can lead to layoffs as well because you can't translate that value. And I think the most important piece of that is data is This like common denominator. We can all agree on numbers. We can say, yes, this percentage increase happened because, you know, I measured it. Here's the data. It's not a different language, it's not different jargon, it's just data. It's numbers, percentages, increases, et cetera. So Greg, what I would love to get your perspective on, you know, seeing everything in the market, hearing what the people are talking about, what Are people getting wrong today? You're tired of hearing all this stuff in the market. What is that thing? What needs to change where you're like, ah, that that's so wrong. Like it misses the mark. When you're, you know, consuming the media, when you're talking to people, what are they getting wrong and what do they need to stop, you know, maybe effective immediately. What's your take?

Greg Portnoy: 10:23

Yeah. I will preface this by saying I love the enthusiasm that a lot of people have, and I love the amount of focus and attention and people talking about partnerships. It didn't exist when I was coming up, quite frankly. So it is exciting and I, and I absolutely love the, the fervor and the energy. That being said, I think there's a danger when there's a lot of people talking about things that don't necessarily add up. And, and I know why they're doing a, it's not like a mystery, it's, it, it benefits someone, it benefits their company, it benefits their, their perspective their position in the market or something like that. Or it's just people trying to build a personal brand, which again, I, I respect the hustle and I get it, but the, the problem is that partnerships is, and, and this, the only reason I say it like this is because I've, I've just been doing it for so long, and when you know the value of partnerships, when you know the potential, the partnerships has to really impact a business, and then you see like just misinformation going out about it, that, that I personally believe honestly is. Look, I don't have any data to support this to be clear, but I think it's dangerous because it could give people the wrong information. It could make them think that something that, that someone says will work, will work when it truly won't work. Because a lot of the advice being given out hasn't been battle tested out there. And you know, I'm not trying to personally attack anyone, but I think it's something where there needs to be. I mean, look, it's not gonna change, but, but I think it's, I think it's people talking about strategies that don't actually work when the rubber hits the road. It's people talking about partnerships in a vacuum without understanding the implications on both internally and their partners and the business on, on what they're trying to say that people should do. And I think, you know, to give some specific examples, because I'm being very abstract right now. There's the narrative of ecosystems and you know, everyone's talking about how do you be an ecosystem. My humble opinion, most companies are not gonna be an ecosystem unless there are other businesses selling significant amounts of services or product on top of your product or service. You're not an ecosystem. You don't have leverage. You're not Microsoft, you're not You know, HubSpot, you're not Salesforce. People aren't flocking to you. You don't have that leverage to say, I'm an ecosystem. You could be part of an ecosystem and you can have a micro ecosystem maybe around your part of an ecosystem, and it's a good way to think about where you are. But letting everybody think that they're gonna suddenly be important enough to all of their partners, that they're gonna be the center of an ecosystem is completely flawed thinking, in my personal opinion. So that's a big one. And then there's the idea of partner leaders, just kind of pointing a lot of fingers. And look, I've done it myself again. I am, I am guilty of all of these things before I knew better. But it's, it's partner leaders really saying like, Hey, sales. Hey, c e o, Hey, c r o. Hey, marketing, why aren't you giving me the, the resourcing or the headcount or the support or whatever that I deserve? And then, When you know the, the crap hits the fan and they get laid off, or they're just not getting the support that they need, they say, well, we would've been successful if not for this, that, or the other. They're not necessarily wrong. They're not=necessarily wrong, but the problem is that they know. Everybody talking in the echo chamber or eco chamber and patting each other on the back and patting themselves on the back is not going to do one thing to change the way that anybody outside of partnerships perceives us. You know, unless we're out here communicating and educating heads of sales and heads of marketing, and heads of product and customer success, and CEOs and investors on What is partnerships? Why is partnerships, how is partnerships and all of the ways in which we're, again, uplifting the rest of the organization and the business as a whole and helping it have a better likelihood of succeeding long term? Unless we, we communicate that consistently, clearly, and in a language that they understand. We can be sitting out here pointing fingers all we want. It's not gonna change anything. So I think that there's a upleveling. That needs to happen among partner leaders where we all know that running partnerships is a business within a business, but we need to start acting like it's a business within a business. We need to have a p and l, you know, profit and loss statement. We understand, need to understand where we're spending money, where we're making money, what are our costs. We need to have set metrics. Metrics that are. Very much metrics that align with the metrics and goals of the rest of the organization. Those other leaders I talked to and the C e O and the investors, let's set metrics that they agree to, that they're bought into. And then once they're bought into the things that partnerships can help the succeed in the business, then they have to be bought into the investment that they're all gonna have to make to drive that success. You know, you gotta get that cross-functional buy-in. And we need to have accountability. We need to have accountability internally. Within the partnerships team and organization, and we need to have accountability across the organization. So we need to do a much better job, like just measuring and managing up. You know, a lot of partner people are really, really good at the art of partnerships, but when it comes down to the science folks just, you know, for better or for worse, either through a lack of understanding or a lack of Oftentimes, I think bandwidth just kind of put that secondarily, and I think that that's a mistake. I think that that's a large reason why we're all fighting this kind of like uphill battle, you know, rolling the rock up the hill constantly. And I think we can get there if we all add a level of operational rigor and accountability to ourselves and each other. I think we can get to a place where we're on level footing with the rest of the organization and we're taken seriously. And we're resourced accordingly and we're given the the support to succeed. Rather than asking to be doing more with less, which partner leaders have been doing since before that term, that phrase existed,

Will Taylor: 16:36

Yeah, that's that actually makes me think of an analogy that people can think about and this is just on the fly. You can, you know, layer in your own context as well. But if, if you're in an organization regardless of the role that you're in and you ask for a promotion, if you just ask for it, they're not just going to give it to you. Like maybe they do. Maybe there's a 6% raise every year, whatever, to, you know, meet or beat inflation. But you want the change that you hope to see or the resources that you hope to see the best kind of ask for, you know, getting that promotion is Building a business case, build the business case, show the numbers, show the impact, show the reason why that you need these additional resources or why you're having this kind of impact, and why, you know, these additional resources will continue to expand that. I would say it's, it's very similar. Like if you were. A VP or a manager of someone and they come to you and they say, Hey, gimme more money because I've been here for long enough and I've worked hard. But they can't really tell you what that's done. You're probably gonna be less inclined to give them those resources. I. But if they come to you with this laid out plan of here's what's going to happen over the next year, and here's the impact that it's going to drive, you're gonna be much more inclined to give them those resources. And so I think, yeah, for partnerships, one, I would say there hasn't been as much education. So the partner leaders that have been out there, they, I don't think they They got lazy or anything, they just didn't have the education to know how to do that or when to do that. But then also I would say from the organizational standpoint, a lot of organizations may have mistreated the program from a perception from the start perspective meaning. They treated it like it's its own sales function, like a channel sales function alone. And then the KPIs are set and then when the metrics aren't hit that they thought were correct, then there's this either disagreement or it kind of falls apart. And I would say more organizations are becoming aware of what are the proper metrics, but then also The actual, you know, better perception of how partnerships should play a role in the organization. But it's also on the partner leaders' hands to one, make sure they're choosing an opportunity where that organization knows the value of partnerships. Like, I think that's definitely very important'cause you can get into a situation where you're just battling against the machine. But then also there's more education out there, much like, you know, we're hearing from you today about what actually matters and how you should approach it. Going back to your point about ecosystems, I find that really interesting because I find that akin to like community as well. You know, why build your own community? You may, maybe you can, but you, you're always going to be biased towards trying to sell your own thing. but you could just go where other people are. Why not go where the people you wanna reach already are hanging out and build there. Join that ecosystem because I would say The ecosystems are natural. People just kind of congregate into these areas based on the tech they use. The people they know, you know, who they talk to, who they listen to. It's not manufactured, you know, it's manufactured to a certain extent, but if you're even at a, an early stage or mid stage company, you probably can't build that ecosystem. You just simply don't have enough resources, and there's way too many people and Your competitors might be, you know, tapping into the existing ecosystem and it just gets confusing. And so I would say to your point about the ecosystem the way I've thought about it is it's not ecosystems. The, there's technically not multiple ecosystems. I mean, there's micro ecosystems within these ecosystems, but technically it's just one big ecosystem and everybody just congregates in the specific areas that they want to congregate in. And The way I, I've started to think more and more about this, especially being in the space and creating content in this area. It's like you, if you try and pull people all towards you. It's not going to work because that's not going to meet them where they are. You need to go to them and, and, I mean, we do this@nearby.com, like obviously we have one place where you can go, there's a website and a newsletter and all that. But you know, I'm talking to sales influencers because we want to educate sellers on the value of partnerships and get them engaged in the conversation. Same thing with marketers. We're trying to go to them. Instead of making them all come to us, use our language like we should try and change The way we interact with them and speak the same language as them. Because another analogy, I'm, I'm on fire with analogies today, but if you go to, you know, another country, are you just gonna say your language to those, those people and they don't speak that same language? Like, why would you ever expect them to understand if you're the one kind, like going into their area and speaking instead of. Using their language and trying to engage with them and meeting them where they are. So, I really like your ideas around like, stop thinking you can build an ecosystem because you probably can't, unless if you're like a C R M then it might be a different story. But I appreciate that viewpoint. Any other thoughts there on any thoughts? Inspired from my analogies.

Greg Portnoy: 22:04

Yeah, it's actually great that you mentioned that.'cause that's actually a really nice segue to I'm sure another topic of conversation that we're gonna have, which is the ideas of partner tech and partner portals. Like it's the same thing. And I really like what you said about like marketing folks and sales folks, like meet them kind of where they are. The idea of a partner portal is the same thing for a partner. It's, it's kind of counterintuitive, you know, it's like, hey, you're gonna do me the favor of sending me, you know, we were talking about earlier how my, my business is getting referrals now, and I'm, I'm very grateful and that somebody would say that like, I value and trust this product and company enough to introduce you. My valued hard one, trusted relationship customer to them. So it's the same thing, like someone's doing that for, for your business as a partnerships team. You're gonna say, Hey, thanks for the favor, but let me go make you jump through all these hoops and follow my, do it my way instead of just doing it. However, wherever, whenever you wanna do, because I'm just so grateful that you've trusted and valued my relationship with you enough to send me business. So like, That's the flaw with partner portals. Like not everybody's an ecosystem. Not everybody needs to have a partner portal. Again, if you are an ecosystem, if people are reselling your product, if people are building services and other products on top of your product, then they need to come somewhere. I. To actually co-sell with you, to actually resell with you to, to service, manage your product, implement it, things like that. Like definitely you need a portal. You need a place for'em to find that information easily. And on the fly, if you're just like a SaaS company who's someone's sending referrals to or integrating with like What do you need a portal for? Why do you have a portal for the content that no one's going to consume for the process that nobody's going to follow for the tens of thousands of dollars you just have laying around to just waste on a piece of technology that's not adding value to anybody. Like your partner team's not even using it, but you think your partners are going to. So it's, sorry. I know we were gonna talk about that later, but it's, it's very much the same. It's very much the same ideology, I think.

Will Taylor: 24:07

Yeah. Yeah. So let's dive into it. What is the, that hard truth about the technology and the, the partnership space what have you seen, what have you, you know, experienced yourself in building all of these programs? What's your take on that hard truth about partner tech in the industry? I.

Greg Portnoy: 24:25

Yeah. I think that partner tech has been missing the mark. Honestly, I believe that a lot of it was built. When people were, when the businesses they were addressing were big businesses, there were complex enterprise tools. A lot of them might've been on-prem or on-premise, you know, before SaaS and things were in the cloud. It made sense to have a portal because there was information that people needed to find, but ultimately, you know, The way that the vast majority of businesses work today, and the vast majority of businesses are, they're not ecosystems. They don't have people making tons of money on top of their product. They may have some integrations and things, which is fine, but that has nothing to do with a partner portal largely, I. And so I think partner tech has been missing the mark. I think the idea that partner platforms are going to be any kind of a source of truth rather than a tool that, that aggregates data from other sources of truth and, and surfaces it in valuable actionable ways is crazy. The c r m will always be the source of truth. The idea of A P R M I think some of the functionality within P RMMs makes sense. I think the idea of A P R M overall, like this is a partnership source of truth. I talked to hundreds of partner leaders in the last, let's call it seven to eight months, and the vast majority of partner teams don't even log into their own PRMs and partner portals. So expecting that your partners are gonna do it is crazy. Expecting that you're gonna make a partnerships team work in two places. I mean, this is even, we can go very meta about this. Like your sales team's not gonna use your partner tech, like your partner team's. Not even gonna use your partner tech, like meet people where they work. The the only reason. All of these tools have proliferated in general, not just partnerships, like across the board, sales tools, marketing tools, all these tools proliferated over the last decade. It was'cause everybody had more money than they knew what to do with. And it was just like, you know, Oprah's gifts of tools. You get a tool and you get a tool and you get a tool. But like now everyone's looking at their budgets and looking at their line items and they're like, well, what value does this provide? What leverage does this give the team? What outcomes does this help drive? And in the case of partner tech, let's add one more. What kind of a partner experience does this create and does it actually improve your partner experience or hurt your partner experience? Because I would wager that the vast majority of partner tech you're using actually hurts your partner experience, which once again is super counterintuitive. But the people building these platforms weren't selling to the partners, they were selling to the partnerships team. So they only thought about this from one perspective. So, I think that's a lot of the hard truths. I think that, that the idea that and this is not a, this is not a paid. This is not a paid support statement here. But I think the idea that that reveal is taking with like, let's meet other people where they work and let's get other teams involved and let's get them bought into partnerships. And the idea of me bound of we all succeed when we're all working together and when we surround the customer with value and when we're all aligned in that value. I think that that's fantastic. I think that that's a great idea. To be fair, I think it's gonna be a lot easier said than done. And I think it's gonna be hard to actually make happen because people are, people are people, they're very hard to change the way that they think. They're very hard to change the way that they do things. But I think it's the right ideology. I think it's meeting people where they work, speaking to them in the language they understand, and getting them bought into a common goal. So I think that that's another thing the partner tech hasn't done. It's, it's been very myopically focused on the partnerships team. And the partnerships team cannot succeed without the support of other teams in the business. So their internal partnerships and the partnerships team cannot succeed without the support of their external partnerships. And yet I have seen very little partner tech address anybody outside of just the partnerships team itself.

Will Taylor: 28:22

Very good point. Yes. That is something I've just constantly been thinking about is like, Like, how can we, like we just talked about, like speak that same language. How can we meet them where they are? Because it's interesting. I, I used to do sales and as a lot of partner people have done and Even though I feel like I'm a little bit different than like the traditional sales person where I, I don't know. I, I talk to everybody in the organization. I'm trying to collaborate. I actually try and work with marketing. Even still, I only wanted to work in my c r m, like let alone my sales engagement tool. Maybe I would just'cause it was a little bit easier to, you know, do my cold calls, but I did not wanna use any other tool. Don't send me anywhere else. I want to be in the, in the c r m. And it's been interesting to see that there's so many other tools that are siloed and they're, they're disconnected, they're not in the regular workflows. And I don't, I can't wrap my head around why some tools try to bring Non-sales roles outside of the place where revenue is generated and where revenue is renewed, which is your c r m you know, your C S M team, they work in there. They have other tools Sure. But they primarily work in there and your sales team definitely works in there as well. So, what can partner people. Get excited about in the world of, you know, the emerging partner tech, how can they like, reframe how they're thinking about technology? Maybe they've had a just an okay experience in the past. What can they get excited about and how can they reframe the way they think about the use of technology in partnerships? What's your take on that?

Greg Portnoy: 30:04

I think that, and this kind of goes back to to the previous conversation around like the things that are missing in partner tech. I think that there's going to be a renewed focus on The things we discussed, which is that, does the tool give you leverage? Does it, does it help you do your job more effectively with less effort and resources? Does it help you drive outcomes like, I transparently have never heard a partner tech platform talk about r o I which is mind blowing to me. And granted again, with this whole, everybody gets a tool thing. A lot of companies didn't have to focus on r o I'cause they just had the money. But does it drive outcomes? What, what value does this actually add to you in dollars and cents to your business, either from time saved or revenue generated? Does it make it easier for partners to work with you and then. I think going back to the idea of measuring and reporting on everything, does it actually measure things for you? Does it help you take that data that already exists in your c R m in your other partner tools? Is it an isolationist tool that is just saying, I'm gonna be the source of truth, we're gonna be the platform and everyone else, like, you know, screw you? Or is it going to say, hey, instead of saying you can only work with us, or you only wanna use your tool? What are the tools that are gonna say, Hey, you've got valuable data about your partnerships here and here and here. We're happy to have you plug that all in and we're gonna be happy to like actually take that data and process that data and bring it back to you in a way that's actionable and helpful to help you do your job. And oh, in this entire process, we're gonna create an amazing partner experience. I think that's what people should get excited about. I think that's what people should demand. I don't know if anybody's working on it besides me. I know some people are actually not, some people are definitely working on it. Folks like Rob at Superglue and the Superglue team and, you know, there, there's a lot of, there's a lot of cool innovation actually happening in the space. But I think that there's a higher bar that we need to set for ourselves as partnerships, leaders, and a higher bar we need to set for the technology. And I think. What's really gonna, we're gonna see here is a lot of communication and collaboration. I think that that's probably been a very central thread to what you and I have been discussing this entire time is There needs to be more communication and collaboration, but not just of teams. You need to, you need to communicate and collaborate on goals, and then the data that lives in the C R M and the P R M and the partner directory, and the automation tool and the account mapping software, and all of these different things like. Why is this data in different, why? Why is this data not talking to each other? Why is this data not communicating and collaborating? Why are these systems not communicating and collaborating? I think that's gonna be super interesting. So to that end, I think that we're gonna see a lot more integrations. I believe that we should see a lot more integrations and all these tools should be really communicating and talking to each other. And a call out to a, a mutual friend of ours. Mr. Blake Williams he's building something super cool with partner go-to-market ai. So leveraging these AI tools, but really in a way that's, that's very helpful and, and honestly pretty cool to help partnerships teams, again, do more with less and, and think through how they're going to accomplish their goals with the limited resources that they have in order to prove the model. That will get them the resources that they need. in that catch 22. It's like, you know, now with things like AI and these kinds of tools like Blake's building, like it's actually possible, you know, it wasn't before I, the amount of like, just like shoulder tapping that I've done in my career to product teams and marketing teams and sales teams and customer success teams is crazy and like, thank God I was. Likable, I guess because I basically was constantly asking other people to do things for me outside of their day-to-day jobs, which is what I believe a huge part of partnerships is. But they could have just said, no, and I would've been screwed, you know? So I think now we have tools that can really help bridge a little bit of that gap for those of us that are not as fortunate to have teams that are willing to be as helpful as my teams were, you know?

Will Taylor: 34:21

Very true. Well, I hope we see that world faster. The connected world and that AI enabled world as. Well, so Greg we're coming up on time. Let's give our audience one tactical takeaway. So from the four programs that you built that were successful, what is one daily or weekly practice that every partner pro should be doing? What's something that you did and what's something that you did that ensured your success that when you look back, you're like, this is that practice that everyone should be doing.

Greg Portnoy: 34:57

I would say it's constantly thinking about how and actioning on how to add value both internally and externally. I really hear a lot of people talking about like external partnerships drive value for your partners, drive value for your partners, drive value for your partners, which you should absolutely do and that's very important. But back to what we were just talking about, I've only been successful because, I have spent as much, if not more time building internal partnerships and driving value to those internal teams. And the folks that I work with, you know, both from like the, the department heads down to like the individual, you know, account managers and salespeople and marketers that I was working with, you know, nobody does any, sorry, maybe not nobody. Very few people will do something for nothing, and that's okay. You need to understand what motivates. People and what they value and how you can provide them with the things that they value and are motivated by in order so that they can support your goals and the things that you're working on, you know, and, and so just again, the thing I learned from my first boss Ryan in partnerships is like, just add value everywhere you can. Understand people, like take the time to really get to know your partners internally and externally, like what drives them. What helps them and then be a part of that, because then they'll wanna help you and it'll just make your life a lot easier. Again, I think, I think a common thread with everything we've talked about is like, and this is just, you know, the, the what, what's the right phrase for this? This is kind of like the, the fun, and I don't wanna say unfortunate truth, but just the, the truth about partnerships is that like, You. Everything takes time, like nothing's immediate in partnerships. Your partner strategy takes time to invest in before it ever bears fruit. Your partner process and your infrastructure, your internal partnerships, your external partnerships. It all takes time. You know, you have to lay the groundwork. There's no shortcuts, there's no growth hacks, you know, to the, to the early parts of partnership. So it's really just like, do the work. Do the work, and add value. Yeah. And the funny thing is that the effort itself goes a long way with what you just said. You know, think about the value that you've added. Measure the value that you've added, like just asking someone, what can I do for you? Or telling, showing someone that you've actually heard what they've said to you, you, you've understood what's important to them, and you're even trying, you're making the effort genuinely to add value to them. I will tell you that just that in and of itself, without actually adding any real value, not to say you shouldn't try, but you not always, it's not always the case that you can, but just even the effort, the effort of asking, truly listening to the answer, and then trying to provide that value in return to either a partner internally or externally will get you so far because you will be surprised at how few people do it. Thank you for having me on. Will, if there's anybody in the audience that you know has a need to more effectively manage referrals and trans, be transparent with their partners about that, we'd love to talk to you. If you have opinions on PRMs, partner portals, partner tech, I would also love to talk to you. So come find me. I clearly love talking about partnerships.

Will Taylor: 38:21

I love it. For, for our audience, what I'm thinking of, and Greg, thank you for sharing that.'cause now, now what I'm thinking is like every week do a review on who are my partners, what do they care about, how can I add value to what they care about? And how can I, you know, immerse myself in the goals that they have so that, you know, when you go into the next week, you're making sure that Oh, we're running this program. How does that align with what they care about? And maybe even write it down some bullet points, each partner, I think that could bring focus to a lot of people because if you're in the chaos of the day-to-day, you're only going to focus on I gotta generate revenue for me and my business.'cause that's what they're measuring me on. And that's what my bonus structure is based on. But Ultimately, if you're wanting to add that strategic value for the business helping your partners is going to have them reciprocate. So Greg, thank you so much for being on today. All, everyone, all who are listening, go check out what Greg is working on. Greg Portnoy on LinkedIn, p o r t n o y. And thank you again. This has been another episode of the Howdy Partners podcast.