Vivek Venkatesh on Unlocking the Secrets of GSI Partner Marketing

What does it take to turn a Global System Integrator into a true growth partner? In this episode, Vivek Venkatesh shares lessons learned from years leading partner marketing initiatives at Intel, Dell, and AWS, where partnerships with firms like Accenture, Deloitte, and Capgemini helped drive large-scale growth and customer adoption.

Vivek explains why GSI partner marketing is fundamentally different from other partner motions, how to identify and activate internal champions, and why the best partner marketers often operate like the CMO of the relationship. The conversation explores the role of storytelling, customer-focused case studies, ABM strategies, sales enablement, and the operational discipline required to track influence across long sales cycles and multi-million-dollar opportunities.

From startup products seeking credibility to enterprise-scale alliance programs, Vivek offers a practical framework for building partner momentum, earning internal advocacy, and creating go-to-market motions that scale far beyond your own sales team.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, I'm Rick Courier, and this is Never Go to Market Alone. More than a show, it's a community where tech, marketing, and the human connection come together. You're not just a listener, you're a GTM friend. And friends don't let friends go to market alone. Let's go. Hey everyone, thanks for joining. Today I sit down with Vivek Vankatesh, someone I worked with for years when he was at AWS and I was at Foundry. And we did a lot of thought leadership programs to drive pipeline for those partnerships. Specifically, global system integrators, GSIs. It's a partner segment we haven't dove into too much in the show. Yet I'm seeing a lot of consistent common challenges working with GSIs across the partner ecosystem. So I'm very excited to share this episode with you today, especially as people out there are trying to figure out how I can drive more impact working with the accentors and Deloits of the world. Well, Vivek shares practical lessons from his time at Intel, Dell, and AWS on what actually works when you're trying to engage these GSIs. We even dive into what are some practical things you can do if you don't have a massive brand behind you like an AWS. For example, we talk about building internal champions, why storytelling matters more than product specs, and how EBM plays into enterprise partnerships. Lastly, why relationships are still at the center of successful partner marketing, especially in the world of GSIs. We talk strategy in this episode, but we really get into some actionable takeaways for anyone in the world of partner marketing, especially working with global system integrators. So with that, let's get into today's episode with Vivek Bank Attached. And as always, if you're enjoying Never Go to Market Alone and want to support our mission of helping partner marketers through best practices and community, please share this episode with someone in your network. Sign up for our newsletter at partnervista.co slash newsletter. And lastly, leave us a rating on your favorite podcast platform. It really helps us spread the word. I hope you enjoy this episode and cheers. Hey Vivek, how's it going? Hey, Ricky. Good morning. I'm doing well. It's nice to uh have you on because a lot of times I'm talking to people I don't know very well or in some cases I've never met before. And but I've worked with you for over a year. So this is kind of fun. I get I get to have you on as a friend and a guest. Thank you so much for inviting me. I know it was a long overdue, right? So why don't we start with a little bit of of your background? I know we're gonna dive into the world of GSI uh partner marketing today, which is I think great because we haven't talked a lot about global system integrators, but why don't you give a little background about yourself and kind of what you've done over the years? And you know, how how do you even know to talk about GSI partner marketing? Yeah, sure. Sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Um yeah, so I think uh I landed in partner marketing like most others, I think by accident. Uh people usually come into marketing. And then uh in my case, I was at Intel for a long time and I'd moved over to the partner business. And uh one of the key things that I learned at Intel was you know how being on the partner side helps you scale and basically help you maximize the number, you know, you only have a certain number of sales or marketers that you have, but the moment you go to the partner side is when you can actually scale out your uh products and systems as long as there's demand for it, right? And you can, you know, build it out globally as well. And that was the thing that I learned in the partner world. And organically, you know, I did a bit of partner sales and then I moved into partner marketing. And within partner marketing, when I was at Dell or after Intel, again, that's when I basically started working quite a bit with the global system integrators. Uh, you know, saw how they operated in terms of building out their business practices for very specific high-growth products that they wanted to sell, and how we could, you know, build a better together sort of story as well. And over the past seven years, I've been at uh Amazon Web Services till April of uh this year, uh, where again I worked very closely with some of the largest uh global system integrators, trying to get out a lot of the AWS services to market. And now, you know, over the past two years, especially with AI being one of the core themes, trying to figure out how we could, you know, sort of integrate some of the third-party uh large language models with whatever AWS had in terms of their underlying infrastructure, and then adding a solution that partners could leverage so that we actually delivered benefits for the end customers as well. So that's been my story in terms of how I learned it with partner marketing.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

No, very cool. It's it's you know, I think a lot of people like you kind of ended up in partner marketing and we've never left. So, you know, it's not the first time I've I've heard that. I I'd love to get into you know what's different about marketing with a GSI as opposed to another partner. But before that, you know, more broadly, what have you seen change in partner marketing over the years? And this might apply to GSIs or not, but I mean, you've been at some big companies, you've been doing a lot of different things across partner marketing. What's changed for you over those years?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

I think uh the reason why people once, you know, even they come in by accident, I think they intentionally then stay for a long time because things do not, things change almost every year, right? The type of partner that you work with is very different. Even though you're trying to sell the same products, uh, the type of work that you do with different partners, the culture that the partner has, the go-to-market motions that partners have is very different. And that is why I think you know, people tend to stay in the partner marketing world once they actually come in. Um, and what I've seen also over the years is earlier, I think most companies used to think of partners as something on the side, you know, something like a cherry on top of the cake. But now it's becoming more and more an integral part of the entire go-to-market motions that any product marketing, team, any product team is trying to build out, right? So they intentionally think, okay, you know, X amount of work can be done by our uh sales teams and our product marketers and our marketing team. But we do need the additional help from our partners. And that's where partner marketing is becoming more and more strategic in terms of the ecosystem build-out, especially, you know, once a new product is coming into the market or a whole new set of products are coming into the market, which is the case as we are seeing with AI now, where a brand new set of products are coming into the market and people are trying to figure out okay, how do we build alliances? How do we try to ensure that you know we get the maximum amount of piece of the pie? And the way that for you to get the piece, the larger piece of the pie is by partnering. And that's when partner marketing becomes very important because you go to market becomes a very important part of the entire uh motion that you have.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yeah, no, I think we've talked a lot about in this show, just in terms of how integral partner marketing has been to the overall growth engine of the organization. You know, like you mentioned product, right? I'd love to know from your perspective, GSI partner marketing. What makes it different for you know, someone who might be in partner marketing but not working with GSIs? Why is it such a unique partner set within the greater partner ecosystem?

SPEAKER_01 7:40

No, great question. I think um the thing to realize with the global system integrators is, you know, in the name itself, right? They are large global companies. These are companies like Accenture, Deloitte, Cap Gemini, who have more than 100,000 consultants. And there are advantages and disadvantages to that, right? So if you are able to convince those consultants to sell your product on your behalf, you effectively have 100,000 salespeople who are selling your product. But the challenge is how do you convince those 100,000 people to actually sell that product for you? And that is why you know you have uh that's why it's a unique challenge for partner marketers. Uh for a lot of other partners, you know, and that's why the GSIs are pretty different from a lot of the other partner marketing uh motions that you have, whether with product companies or distributors or some of the large, you know, the other parts of partner marketing, in the sense that these are uh you know really large companies. They take a long time to uh decide on working with you. And but once they decide to work with you, you know, that's when you see a huge quantum jump in terms of the per uh uh you know uh uh per uh unit sale, for example, will be one of the highest, right? So if you're setting a product for X dollars with some of the other partners that you have, the moment you start selling it with a GSI, for example, it'll be you know easily 5x, 10x of your average sale value that you have with some of the other partners.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Sounds like so much of it is maybe not marketing, but but sales enablement. So, you know, I mean, you you need to activate that that global sales team at one account while you're building programs, building content. Like walk me through some of the challenges you faced trying to bring some of these partnerships to market from a marketing perspective and and what worked for you in achieving that?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Right. No, great question again. Um I think uh, you know, not so much at AWS, but in my previous company, which was called Booby. Uh it was a small startup that Dell had acquired. And one of the things that uh they wanted to do was obviously accelerate uh their revenue stream through working with some of the large system integrators. And what did work again, you know, like you rightly pointed out, was the enablement strategy. You need to find out champions within the large system integrators. And the advantage that I had was within with Boomi, there were some champions at Deloitte, and they are the ones who actually took the product, tried it out, and then started convincing folks internally that this is a great product that we should then provide to our customers. And it became easier for us because then they helped us actually build out uh the enablement toolkit, the type of case studies, what will resonate internally within uh you know those teams. And you know, they acted as internal champions. And that is the key for any partner marketer listening to this podcast and trying to work with the GSI that they have not worked with before, is along with your partner development manager or your partner manager, try to figure out who the champions are for your product and cultivate them, uh, you know, provide them with you know, at least more information than they can consume so that they are then best equipped to internally evangelize your product and act as the champion for your product. And that's, you know, I think one of the keys that I I would think for.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

I think that's a great takeaway because I think a lot of partner marketing teams are being impacted with AI for for better or worse. Um, you know, but that's not something AI can replace in terms of, you know, building a relationship with an internal champion and move the partnership forward from your perspective and in terms of driving impact. That's just old school personal relationship building.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yep, correct. I know. And that's something I don't know, until you know agents are there on all sides, I don't think that can be the case.

unknown 12:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

That's good. That's some job job security for us that that know how to do it. I want to ask you a little bit about content because I know you and I, especially when you were at AWS, you and I did a lot of work together around content. Talk to me a little bit about the role that content plays in the role in in the world of GSI partner marketing and and you know, what kind of content were you developing that was driving impact on your programs?

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Uh again, you you don't come to the core of what works with part for GSI partner marketing again. Uh you know, the the way that part GSIs sell to their customers is leveraging case studies and uh use cases, right? Uh they typically tend to sell to Fortune 2000 companies, so some of the largest global companies that are there in the world. And so they they have a pretty limited set of customers that they work with. And their key is uh to sell more and more of their services to the same set of customers. And one of the key ways that they do it is every time they work with a new product company or you know, a new infrastructure company like AWS is trying to build out new services on top of the products that these product companies are providing to them. And uh the way that they convince their end customers is through case studies. So they basically say, hey, here's what I have done with this manufacturing company leveraging AWS's services or AWS products or Boomi products. I, you know, you are another manufacturing company, and I can help you leverage and get the same value out of leveraging this product. And you know, the work that we, you know, the insight that we had was we sort of twisted the case study a little bit. A lot of the case studies from product technology companies tend to be, you know, highly focused on speeds and feeds, right? They're people are passionate about the products that they've built out. They think it's going to provide value to their end customers. And there is a heavy tendency for those uh uh for those case studies to be technical in nature, saying that, you know, I have put in this additional uh you know, widget in here, which is why we can increase the speed of your application by 5x or 10x or some other number. But the challenge with that sort of a case study we found with GSIs is that they were not able to convince, for example, in my case with those manufacturing companies saying what's in it for me. So we sort of twisted it and you know, brought a different uh angle to it where we said, okay, imagine that you are an end customer of the customer of the GSI, and think about how you want to present a case study to that end customer. So, for example, uh, you know, if uh one of the GSIs was working with Toyota Motor Corporation, and the way we presented the case study was if you're leveraging uh AWS plus a GSI's products, what will happen is an end customer of Toyota, because of the work that we have done on Toyota supply chain, is able to place an order on the Toyota website, see how their actual car is being manufactured on the factory floor, actually follow the entire process till the car is actually being delivered to the dealership. And that's the way that we, you know, we did talk about, you know, in the case study, we talked about how AWS's services, the services that Deloitte in this case was providing, but we did not focus so much on, okay, we improved your supply chain by X percentage. We basically said because of this uh usage of AWS products and the services institutions provided by Deloitte, it's the end customer of Toyota who's able to get their cars delivered to them in three lesser months rather than taking so much time. And that's the way it really resonated. So we used a lot of these case studies across the board with a lot of customers. We use them in a lot of campaigns, and we see, I know we saw a tremendous amount of success, uh, you know, trying to basically give the spin on the case studies that we create.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Now, I think that's super helpful because I know, you know, personally working with a lot of GSI partner marketers, how important content is, you know, that go-to-market strategy, but just thinking through what kind of content. And so I think that's really helpful in understanding not just case study content, but how to approach a case study through the lens of the customer, the results, the story you want to tell. So I think just tactically, that's that's really helpful to the audience. Yep. Thank you. Um, I want to ask in terms of, okay, you have content. Now we got to get that in market. And I know working with a lot of GSIs, hyper focus on you know, a specific number of accounts. So, you know, how did ABM typically play into your programs and any advice, best practices, or your approach to ABM working with GSIs?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yes, I think uh uh no great question again. I think ABM becomes even more important. And uh the other thing with GSIs also is that they are they focus mostly by vertical. So they have a very specific universe of consultants working on financial services, consultants working with manufacturing, with auto, with energy. So once you create the content for these specific verticals, by which I mean you have those white papers, those solution briefs, and those end customer case studies. That's when we try to put together uh, you know, uh ABM campaigns or a full lifecycle campaign, right? So it will include content syndication, uh, you know, targeting universe of just manufacturing, for example. Uh that's the one that we took. Uh focus just on a specific geo. And sometimes you know, uh GSIs used to come back to us saying, no, we just want to focus on the Northeast financial services companies, for example. So you just focus on a specific Geo, on a specific set of customers. So the key then becomes uh, you know, trying to track and keeping account of who and all from a specific customer in financial services or manufacturing are you touching through your campaigns? So marketing operations becomes much more important. And that is something, you know, on the back end that you as a partner marketer should ensure that you're crossing your T's and dotting your I's because you may be touching uh, you know, 20 people from a large multi-billion dollar, you know, um auto manufacturing uh organization, for example. And it is your responsibility as the partner marketer to ensure that you're tracking it so that you get the credit for all the activations that you have done with that specific company uh and ensure that, you know, when a multimillion dollar deal is closed in an 18-month timeframe, you are actually given credit for the type of work that you have done across the board.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

All right, let's dive into that last part a little bit in more detail because I think that's the part a lot of partner marketers struggle for. And, you know, I'm not sure there is any universal solution to it, but in terms of just tracking and measurement, you know, 18-month deal, multi-million dollar deals, large global system integrators, large customers, you know, how are you tracking and measuring pipeline and success on these large, lengthy deals?

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Uh yeah, that is actually, I think, the key of where, you know, the success and failure of partner marketers with GSIs, because tracking becomes hyper important, like you said. And I, you know, the best practices that I have and you know, where we had at AWS as well, is primarily having campaign codes for every campaign that you're running and ensure that you're tiering them as well. So you may have a parent campaign code, but under that, for every activity that you're doing, whether you're doing a round table, whether you're doing webinars, you are sort of putting it into a into a you know parentry uh sort of parent-child sort of tree so that you are tracking the number of campaigns that you're doing and you're oversharing with your counterparts at the GSIs, right? So you have to work really closely with the partner marketers on the other side as well, because the two of you are a team and you have to work together hand in hand for you to A, be able to track it and B, ensure that both of you get enough credit for the type of activations that you've done. But there we go. Back not, yeah. Unfortunately, back to the relationship side though, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

And it's like operations, yeah, computer is part of it, but if you're not in that, you know, if you don't have that relationship, you might be missing some pipeline report on it. I love it. Sorry to cut you off there. Uh I want to ask though, you know, Dell, AWS, big brands, obviously GSIs are going to work with you as a partner. You know, what if you're coming from a not so large brand and you're trying to establish a partner program with the GSI? Any advice for those partner marketers who maybe may A GSI partner marketer at a mid-size or smaller organization. I'm trying to get something off the ground with a GSI. What advice do you have for those folks?

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yep. I think even at Dell, when I did work at Dell for a couple of years, I worked with a startup that Dell had acquired called Boomi. And uh it was not a well-known product at that time. It was an integration platform as a service. It was a brand new, you know, uh industry or a brand new product space that they were launching in. And uh I think the key to success to to get that product off the ground with GSIs was getting champions within the GSIs. So you do need consultants, technologists who are using that product, and they become, you know, that product is one of their favorites. So you have to identify those champions within the GSIs, and that's when your work becomes easier because they are the ones who act as evangelists for your product and take it through within that company, you know, within that GSI, they tell you how to operate, they tell you who the key players are, and they act as uh, you know, one of the you know success metrics for you. So the advice that I would give is, you know, if you have, if you think you have a great product, try to identify who's downloading the product that you have. And if you have somebody at some of these larger system integrators, the Deloitte's Accentures, Cap Gemini's of the world, uh identify them and then try to build relationships with those uh consultants. And if they are, you know, and get them to act as evangelists for you. And once they become evangelists, they can, you know, hold lunch and learns for more such developers to come in and try the product. And that's when you build, you know, a religion within that consulting organization so that they can then evangelize on your behalf.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

I think that's why I love partner marketing so much because the role is so multifaceted. I mean, you're you're almost describing a sales rep and uh from a sales rep perspective, in the sense that like I've worked large accounts as a sales rep, and that's kind of what I had to do, right? You find your internal champion, you do those things to help facilitate, educate, engage, bring other, bring other people on board. But that's just one part of the job, right? You're also developing copy and doing operations and doing marketing. And so it's like you wear many hats. But I think the the main theme here I picked away though is like whether you're thinking about going to GSI partner marketing or you're hiring a GSI partner marketer, like you got to have that foundational marketing operations side of things, content storytelling. But if you can't build relationships, you're gonna be in an uphill battle because it sounds like GSI partner marketing is is very much relationship-driven. Correct. It is.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

And uh, you know, and uh I I remember some old pot marketer a few years back said basically you act as a you know chief marketing officer for that relationship, right, with that GSI. Because you're doing all sorts of things, like you said, between marketing operations, you know, tracking the stuff, running events, you know, and working on campaigns, building out content. And over and above, you need to have those relationships with uh, you know, your counterparts in those GSIs to actually build a you know very successful partnership on the partner marketing side as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Well, I think this has been a great conversation in terms of figuring out how do I want to become the CMO of my GSI partnership. So Vag, thanks for sharing all the inside baseball. It's this has been fun and it's it's good to finally get you on the podcast and we get to have this fun conversation.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Thanks so much, Ricky, as well. I know I really enjoyed this conversation. And if your listeners have any questions, uh feel free to pass them to me and I'll be holding.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Absolutely. Yeah, and we'll we'll we'll pass on on your uh LinkedIn profile on uh on the show notes so people will know how to get in touch with you. And thanks for coming on, Vivek. It was a lot of fun. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Same here, Ricky. Have a good rest of your day.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Thanks. That's it for this episode of Never Go to Market Alone. If you liked what you heard, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with another GTM friend. For new episodes or to see how we're helping partner marketers succeed, visit partnervista.co because friends don't let friends go to market alone.