Kathy Bui on Building Partner Programs That Drive Revenue

Partner marketing is no longer measured by campaigns alone. It's becoming one of the most important growth functions inside modern go-to-market organizations. In this episode, Kathy Bui reflects on more than two decades in partner marketing, sharing how the role has evolved from managing MDF programs to driving pipeline, revenue, enablement, and cross-functional strategy.

Kathy explains why today's partner marketers must think beyond marketing activities and instead operate like the CMO of their partnerships. The conversation explores building stronger relationships with partners and sales teams, aligning around business outcomes, measuring impact, and navigating AI without losing the human element that makes partnerships successful. Rick and Kathy also discuss why the best partner marketers combine strategic thinking with curiosity, communication, and relentless execution.

Whether you're new to partner marketing or leading a mature partner ecosystem, Kathy offers practical insights into where the discipline is headed and the skills that will define the next generation of partner marketing leaders.

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. My guest today is Kathy Bowie, a partner marketing leader with more than two decades of experience building and scaling partner programs across the tech industry. Partner marketing is one of the biggest mandates in the go-to-market org and consistently one of the smallest teams. You're expected to drive pipeline, enable partners, align with sales, build go-to-market strategies, and on and on and on. I'm losing breath just talking about it all. And most of the time, what are you doing? Well, you're doing it as a team of one, all by yourself. So how do you actually make it work? Kathy has seen the role evolve from a function that was primarily focused on activities, managing MDF, events, campaigns, webinars, into one that looks more like a revenue motion. And with that shift comes a completely different set of expectations, skills, and honestly, a different way of thinking about your seat at the table. In this episode, we get into what separates good partner marketers from great ones, the biggest misconception about what the role actually does, and how to build the kind of sales relationship that makes your programs land. And lastly, where all this is heading, especially as alliance between marketing, alliance, and sales keeps getting blurred. I really hope you enjoy this episode. Make sure you give us a rating or like on your favorite platform. And let's dig into it. Cheers. Well, hey Kathy, how's it going?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Hi, how are you? I am doing well.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

I know, I know it, I know things are going well because we were just joking about how this is the the what'd you call it, the era of yes or the yes era?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

I am my I'm in my era of yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

I love it. Oh, I think that's just the way to, you know, it's funny. I've been I've been talking to my kids about, you know, they've been finding pennies on the ground and looking for four-leaf clovers. So they're trying to find things to be lucky. And I've been trying to teach them like a lot of luck is just saying yes or be ready when an opportunity presents itself. So I guess here we are starting off like a philosophical way to look at these things.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yes, go all in.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

I love it. Well, look, you and I have known each other for a little while. It's always fun to get friendly faces on the podcast. Why don't you just do a quick introduction of yourself? And I'd love to, you know, what actually I don't really know this part. I'd love to hear kind of your your story in partner marketing. I know you're a partner marketer, I know where I met you, but like I don't know how you got to this point.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah. Well, first and foremost, thanks for having me. Um, so do a little background about myself. I actually got into partner marketing by accident. Um, so to age myself, I graduated during the dot-com bus. Um, so during the job market was a little bit tough, and companies weren't hiring the way that they used to a few years earlier. And an opportunity came up, and it was for a contract role managing their MDF program. And to be quite honest, I didn't even know what those three letters stood for. What I quickly learned was it learned was everyone suddenly wanted to be my friend because I was managing a pretty sizable budget. And beyond the funding, I was really became fascinated about partner marketing itself. I got I got a front row seat to see how vendors and partners worked together, um, how marketing dollars were invested, and how it actually drove results. And the experience led me um to working at VMware, pre-IPO. And it gave me an opportunity to help build and scale the company's first global MTF program, streamlining the management of a $40 million funding program at the time. It gave me a really deep understanding of channel program, um, partner economics, and how to think about ROI at scale. And at that point, I realized that I didn't really want to spend my whole career managing MDF programs. So I started talking with a bunch of colleagues in sales and alliances and um partner marketing and asking a lot of questions in terms of like, what is what do they do? What is their role? You know, what are the challenges? What do they love about it? And that's where I discovered partner marketing. And I really, it really appealed to me that it combined everything that I enjoy. I get to work with closely with the um the partners, learn from the sales team, think strategically about go to market, staying connected to the marketing team, and no two days were ever the same. And let's be real, like I'm I don't like boredom. Um so looking back, which started as an accidental career move, turned into a career that spanned in more than two decades. And I still love it because partnership sits at the core center of business, um, how business grow. And there's just so much to learn. So that's my journey.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah, no, that's a that's awesome. I, you know, I I hear from a lot of people around the managing the MDF part as not the thing most favorable on the partner marketing side. What what was it that that you did fall in love with? Like what were the things that like this this is something I I didn't know what MDF meant when I came into this journey, but this is why I want to continue with partnerships and partner marketing.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Yeah, what I love about it was that um, you know, I'm a people person. I just love talking with a bunch of companies and seeing what really resonate with people um in terms of like um what are some of the challenges, what's working, what's not working, what can I do in my program or my role to make your job easier, right? Um, so my whole thing is that let's take the complexity out of the whole situation and make it streamlined to make it easier to work with. And um, you know, we my whole role is to build things off a relationship and what I can do to make your job a little bit easier, then I think I'm doing the great impact.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

It's funny, I think that's part of the reason why I fell in love with partner marketing too. And it's it's taking me a long time to realize this in my career, but I like people. So I've always been attracted to like the people side of business, a little less so that you know the complexity, you know, operations side, which is just as important, but I like the people too. I I want to ask, in terms of you know, what you've seen over the years, different businesses you've worked at, what's changed a lot in partner marketing over this over these years, for better or worse?

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah, I think like um partner marketing used to be primarily on um by activities, right? You think about marketing activities. That could be your events, your webinars, your campaign. And today's conversation is it's more focused about business outcome. And we are increasingly expected to help drive pipeline, um, support co-sale motion, enable partners, and contribute to revenue growth. And that's what I've seen it has revolved in the in over the course of years.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Very cool. From from your perspective, you probably've worked with a lot of different types of people across the organization, field, corporate, sales, I mean, you you name it. Everyone probably has an idea of what partner marketing is. From your point of view, what are some of the biggest misconceptions about what you do and partner marketers do?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, I feel like the biggest conception is um awareness, right? People think that, I mean, awareness is important, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't automatically translate into revenue. So the strongest partner marketing team thinks about the full journey. So you think about from awareness to enablement to building out pipeline, um, and then customer adoption, right? Awareness is important, it's a starting point, but it's not the finish line. And I think that that's the most misconception is that partner brings awareness. And it's just not that. It's much more.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

I want to ask you about that real quick in terms of like that full journey. I mean, I almost feel like partner marketers are set up to fail in the sense that there's so much to do, right? I mean, what you just said, like a full, full integrated brand and demand program. And even then, that's not your full-time job. Like, I mean, you have to manage the partner, you have to develop uh joint go-to-market strategy, you got to build content, you gotta make, you know, think about the operationalized side of these things. Like, how do you manage, just first, I'm not I'm overwhelmed just talking about it. So, how do you like manage all this day in, day out? I mean, it sounds impossible.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, it's I feel like a partner marketing role has really become like a mini CMO role opportunity. Um, I think like just staying aligned with your core team, understanding what is the big picture, the bigger picture, what is the strategy, um, and how do we go to market with that and staying focused, right? Um, and making sure that you're always having a list of what's high priority and just going around that. Um, I think that the best, the best part of marketing people to me is that you really understand the bigger picture, right? Staying hungry, um, being always curious, and it's understanding like the cell motion, the partner ecosystem, understanding the enablement, um, and how to measure impact, right? Everything is a big, a bigger, bigger story that combines together that tells a meaningful thing. And the role has become such more of a cross-functional than it has in a few years ago. And partner marketing is no longer just a marketing function as we just talked about. It's becoming such a um a growth function to me.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Yeah, you know, it's funny. I've I've been hearing the the term CMO pop up a lot on this show. Um, you know, we've been talking a lot about the be the CMO of your partnership, right? And it sounds like that that resonates with you in terms of like what you see as being important out there.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Yeah, that's a big role itself.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah. So this is probably a good point to ask you then, like as you're managing all of that, um, what are the what are the important skills? Like if I'm thinking about my career and developing skills to be a better partner marketer or move up within the organization or just be more successful in my day-to-day job, what are the skills that are gonna help you do that?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, I I think it's just um understanding how the sales motion run, um, just not from the partner ecosystem, but also from the direct sales side. Um, understanding uh, you know, what are their pain points? How can we make it easier for them? What are some of their fiction, you know, how can I, how can they bring partners into opportunities? How can how can we bring partners into a conversation, right? Um, to me, part to my role, partners are always top of my. So even though I sit within the company, but I also have to advocate for my partners, right? And that's building relationship. And then, you know, and how do we continue to enable our sales team, right? Um, so not also bringing them into conversation conversation, but how can I help enable the sales team? So enablement used to my mind, it always was enabling the partner, right? But you also have to enable the direct sales team. Um, but then also how do we be able to measure impact? Um, so you could do everything that you can, but if you don't show results in what you're doing, it doesn't really tell the bigger story. And people like let's be transparent. People love numbers, right? People love metrics. So to me, is understanding um every single role, understanding how things play and being able to work cross-functionally, I think that's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

From a from a sales perspective, is that I mean, that sounds incredibly important to me in terms of building that relationship to help enable sales. Is that if I'm just a partner marketer focusing on doing that, am I just building a relationship with the sales leader? Am I working with the individual sales reps? Is it more of a programmatic approach where you have like weekly or monthly meetings? Like what does that look like in practice?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of everything, right? I don't think anyone really has like a great, um, a great story of doing it perfectly. Um, I think it's a combination to everything. I'm a big communicator where I feel like it's always good to over-communicate to undercommunicate. Um, so getting aligned, working really closely for me is working really closely with my stakeholders and then really working with them, working with the direct sales team and their leadership. Um, and then also like sharing great wins, right? Um, you know, I think that a lot of times people want to understand what are some great wins that they have done with partners and sharing best practice. So to me, it's it's all the above.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

This goes back to just how much you have to do in a given day, right? And so I mean, like, let's just add one more to the list, right? Um Yeah. Maybe this is a good time to ask about AI, right? Because it's like, you know, there's a lot that can be done with AI to make your job easier. You know, I'd love your perspective on AI within partner marketing. What does that look like from your perspective? Where is it hurting and where is it helping?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah, I feel like AI is really top of mind. It's constantly moving fast, um, and it's hard to keep up. And AI is helping us move faster, but it's also raising the bar of expectations, right? Um, so content creation, executions are becoming easier. Um, but what's becoming more valuable, in my opinion, is strategic thinking, relationship building, um, and knowing how to connect partners to real business outcome. And I don't think AI can replace that. And so, especially that is really important into the partner marketing um role, right? It's that you're constantly building relationships, and I don't see AI coming and doing that job.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Yeah, it's funny. No, I know, I agree. So my last guest was Vivek, he used to work at AWS, and we talked a lot about GSI partner marketing. And, you know, we were talking about like, okay, if you don't work at an AWS, you work at a much smaller company without the brand recognition. How do you give a G, you know, system integrator, a global system integrator, even pay you the attention, let alone, you know, develop a joint go-to-market strategy. And his point was you got to build a relationship. You got you got to find your internal stakeholder at that GSI and build a relationship and build, build the whole program around that as the foundation. And I'm sorry, but AI is not coming in to do that for you. And it doesn't mean there's not areas where you can utilize AI to maybe free up more of your time to focus on the relationship. And that for me, that's that's a lot of this comes down to. And I think you mentioned a little bit earlier, but like focusing on the areas you want to as a partner marketer, not getting bogged down in, you know, MDF management as an example.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah, it's like you said, it's like it's coming down building the relationship, understanding like the gaps, the challenges, and then navigating AI to fill in those gaps, right? Because you need a human relationship, but you also need a human person to prompt and give it direction to steer it to give you the um the results that you need.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Yeah. Any other any other thoughts before we leave the AI topic in terms of like tips, tricks, areas you see it going wrong, or things you're really hopeful for?

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Um, not that I could think of. I just feel like it's changing so fast that we're all holding on and seeing how it revolves and how things are going. Because I I don't think it's we're so we're so at the tip of the iceberg, right? I don't, you know, we're still trying to figure it out. And it's not perfect yet. And like I said, we're all just sitting and seeing how things go and navigating it as we go. Like I always like the theory of like we're all ducks in the lake, and but our our our feet under the waters are like scrambly.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's funny. I'll give I'll give you some personal examples. Like when we when we started building our product at Partner Vista, we had AI very much in the face of the prospect, you know, the leads we were generating. And it's like, hey, I'm AI, tell me about your priorities and needs. And people just didn't want to talk to it. I feel like people want to talk to AI kind of on their own terms, primarily chat, tech space. You know, I think people are talking more verbally. But, you know, when a third party like Partner Vista threw it in their face, there was a lot of reluctance to it. And so, you know, we've scaled back and we're still utilizing AI more than we did before, but it's kind of behind the scenes and doing things that the prospect doesn't know about. So, a good example is like when we do an email nurture cadence now, the emails themselves are personalized by AI in real time. So that if you know, we get a lead and we go nurture that that lead, every email that goes out in each lead is a little bit different based on where that lead works, the, the, the challenges that we're facing, the priorities are facing. And we were doing the same thing on landing pages. They don't know AI is part of it, but they're getting a better experience because of AI. So it's been like a learning process for us of like, all right, we got this tech, let's throw it in your face. Okay, that doesn't work. Let's let's take a step back, think about it a little bit differently. And we're just trying to hold on and go go fast and optimize, you know, where we're seeing success.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah. And I feel like you you gotta get on board because this movie is so fast. And if you don't get on board, you're just gonna get lost.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Right. Totally. So, all right, speaking of getting lost, like where all where's all this going? And this is not specific to AI, but just partner marketing in general. There's been a lot of change, you've seen a lot of change. Where do you think, where do you think it's going?

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Yeah, I think partner marketing will continue to become more of um more revenue oriented. Um, the lines between partner marketing, alliances, sales, enamelment, enablement are already blurry, right? And um the future is less about activities, it's more about measurable business impact. And to me, the strongest ecosystems aren't built on logos, they're built on execution. And that's where I think the future will be. Um, you know, I just feel like the conversation has really revolved in the last couple of years, and and that's where the conversation is going. Um, and I just feel like it's gonna be more in that direction, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Do you do you think that it would be easier for companies to figure out if they're smaller and less, you know, I'm almost I'm almost thinking like these large companies that have departments and process, like is it harder to to to materialize that future than if you're a smaller company, more nimble in your your building structure or building process? Like, how do you think companies adopt that model?

SPEAKER_01 18:38

I I I think that's kind of like the holy grail question. I don't know. Um but I feel like big or small, I think we're still all trying to figure it out. Um, at the same time, I feel like we combine all the partner market people together and have this conversation. Maybe we can map out what a perfect roadmap will look like. And it comes back to like, how do we all get attribution? How do we count partner attribution, right? And I think again, we put our heads together, maybe, right? Um, but I don't think anyone has perfected. I think we're still trying to figure this out. Like I said, the conversation of partner marketing has changed over the course of years. Um, now it's becoming more of a revenue um motion. And um, you know, I think we're just trying to figure it out as we go. And like you said, we're one person, you know, partner marketing team is pretty lean. We have a lot to do, and we're try we're we're doing the best we can with the resources we have.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Yeah, well, I couldn't say that any better. I mean, there's there's a lot of folks out there, not a total ton a lot of resources. Sorry, not a ton a lot of resources, but you know, they are doing the best they can. So, Kathy, this has been awesome. I appreciate you coming on and sharing, and uh we'll we'll uh link to your LinkedIn so people can find you. But uh thank you for being on the show.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yeah, thanks for having me. That was uh so much fun.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Take care.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

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.