PartnerVista Launch Webinar – Panel Discussion -TRANSCRIPT

Rick Currier (00:00)
All right, well, welcome everyone. I think people are piling in. I see the numbers going up there. ⁓ If you are just joining us, we do have the chat open. We are taking a community first approach here at Partner Vista. And so we want to make you as much a part of this webinar as the three of us. I am your host for today. I am also the CEO and founder of Partner Vista. My name is Rick Currier.

I'm also joined by two lovely guests, Melissa Nacerino from Zscaler and Maisa Fernandez from ServiceNow. And I got Asher Matthew, our first person on the chat. Thanks for contributing. I'll do my best to check the chat, but I also might be a little distracted as we go through the panel today. So I'm going to let Maisa and Melissa do a proper introduction, but I just kind of want to run through the agenda of what we're going to do today because

This isn't your typical webinar where I'm going to make you sit through an hour worth of slides and drag that out. We're going to have a fun, lively panel discussion today. ⁓ First, ⁓ we're going to do proper introduction, like I said. Then I want to do a quick shout out to our launch sponsors, some wonderful vendors and agencies that helped make this possible. I've been getting a lot of questions about Partner Vista, so I am going to spend just a couple minutes talking about who are we? What are we doing here?

Then we're going to go in the panel discussion, which I know many of you are here for. And that's where we're going to spend the bulk of the time today and just having a fun, lively discussion. Then at the very end, definitely stick around. We're giving some great giveaways away. I shouldn't say we, the launch sponsors are. So we'll do a proper introduction of those launch sponsors at the end and give some great prizes away. So with that, ⁓ Melissa, Maisa, I'd love to hand it over to you for a proper introduction. Why don't you tell everybody.

who you are, where you work, and what you do.

Do you want to first?

Maisa Fernandez (01:58)
Yeah,

absolutely.

Melissa Nacerino (01:59)
Thank you so much. you for having me. Really looking forward to this engaging conversation. My name is Melissa Nasserino. I'm the vice president of global partner marketing at Zscaler. We've been here for just under two years now. And I've been in the industry for a number of years in very similar roles, both global as well as in the Americas. Really have been in this partner marketing role for

well over a decade, teetering on to. And I started my career working for a partner. So I love when we have those conversations and we can bring that vantage point to say, I've been in your shoes, knowing what we want to have from vendors, how we want vendors to support us. So really looking forward to, again, the conversation and thank you again for having me.

Rick Currier (02:57)
Yeah, thanks, Melissa. Maisa

Maisa Fernandez (02:59)
Yeah, great. ⁓ My name is Maisa Fernandez. I'm at ServiceNow. I am the global partner marketing director here and have been for about, let's see, I've been on the partner ecosystem for about four years. I've been at ServiceNow for about seven and a half years, taking on a few different types of roles. So I used to work on the integrated campaigns team. And then after that, I was on the account-based marketing team.

And that's really where I got a little taste of the partner ecosystem as I was working on some of our big GSIs and got a taste for the nuance and the complex infrastructure of what partners do and really fell in love with it. And so that's what really drew me to this space. So I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having us, Rick.

Rick Currier (03:52)
Now, thank you both. And I think that's always interesting talking to folks like yourself on the partner side and that there's a very broad background that seems to all come together in the role and the need. And so it gives you great perspective. And especially as we face some of the challenges we're going to talk to today, how do we overcome those challenges and be successful? So thank you for the background. So quick shout out to the launch sponsor. These are some of my few of the slides I'm going to share today. Maisa, Melissa, can we see these slides OK?

Yes, perfect. We have five wonderful launch sponsors spanning Legion AI video production community and then agencies focused on partner marketing. I just want to say as as a you know founder of a new startup, not only has there been you know humbling support from the partner marketing community, but also the vendor community in the agencies out there. So just thank you guys for being part of this means a lot to me. Very excited to do the giveaways at the end. We got some cool gift cards.

free trials of the products and services and some cool swag. So definitely stick around for the end. Before I get to the next slide, ⁓ know, quick background on myself. I've been in B2B tech marketing for 20 years. I cut my teeth out of college going straight into it at Tech Target for five years, learned everything about Legion, was at IDG Foundry for 15 years after that. Last part of my tenure was really focused on supporting the partner marketing side of things.

And despite working with hundreds of partner marketers across thousands of programs, I kept seeing the same challenges pop up and it really boils down into four common areas. And even today, I think this is really having an impact in the results we're seeing in its costing pipeline versus around scale. I've seen kind of two things. Programs are either repeatable and scalable, but then they lose the customization and flexibility to treat partners uniquely or vice versa.

⁓ You know, we can we can customize programs, but then they take weeks, if not months to get off the ground, right? And so that's a huge challenge. Next is around resources, right? I'm seeing a lot more resource constraints on traditionally well-resourced teams, but even the teams that are well-resourced, chances are you're working with partners that don't have the resources to scale or drive results. Next is around conversions. Just hearing from a lot of people out there, even at ⁓ really big companies with a lot of resources and tools.

We're seeing stalled pipeline, right? Leads aren't converting. We're throwing leads over the fence. We don't even know if anyone's calling on them. And it's having a major impact on the results we're seeing. And then last is reporting. And I've seen major advancements in reporting over the years, some really great information we're generating, but it's not very actionable, right? It's not helping drive conversions. It's not helping set sales up for success. And it's frankly nice to have, but it's not helping me do my job better. So we launched Partner Vista with these challenges in mind.

And not only setting out specifically to solve them, but doing it through the lens of the partner marketer or the lens of strategic partnerships. And we really wanted to build something from the ground up with partner marketers for partner marketers. What we really want to do is we wanted to go beyond the lead, beyond the MQL, because we understand you don't really want MQLs, you want impact. And so we're taking leads and we're putting them through what we call PV360 or the PartnerVista360 engagement journey.

and utilizing a variety of tools to help drive engagement, qualification, and set sales up to convert. But again, we're doing it through the lens of the partner marketer. everything we have to do has to be easy to scale, easy to execute, and then easy to convert. Because we believe at the end of the day, it's time for you to expect more than leads. So I'm not really going to go into details of products and services. I just want to share one more slide in terms of how we're aligning our solutions to challenges here.

Well, the first thing we've done is we've built modular campaigns specifically with built-in flexibility. So we want to help you take a campaign to market that can be customized and flexible to unique partner needs, again, without a heavy lift our production timeline. Give an example of that, we have co-branded content experiences that we can customize with AI in real time. Again, it's not going to take you a long time to get those off the ground. Addressing stalled pipeline.

we're utilizing AI conversations to talk to these leads, understand the priorities and challenges. Not only does this help us engage them, but it helps us qualify the leads to drive conversions. And the last thing we're doing is we're aligning with sales from day one. So we're creating sales ready playbooks that are providing AI powered recommendations to the sales reps. So again, I have a conversation with this lead through AI, I get this information, it's what we do with that information that's gonna help drive conversions.

or reutilizing AI to provide recommendations and guided follow up for the sales rep so they know exactly what to do with each lead. Now, I think what's important with all of this is, again, through that lens of the strategic partner marketer. So no tech integrations, no platform commitments. You don't need dedicated resources, know, dedicated to get these things off the ground. We've optimized this for MDF, 90 day cycles, easy to scale, easy to execute, easy to convert.

We know the nuance and challenges of partner marketers and if it doesn't fit that framework, it's not something that we're gonna do. So that's it for Partner Vista. I really wanna get in the panel discussion, but just kind of a next step if you're looking for more information, head on over to partnervista.co. But we're also bringing a new podcast to market in June. We're taking a very much community first approach to everything we're doing. That's why I have Maisa and Melissa on this call today. That's why I have the chat open for you all to share.

I want to highlight the stories out there in partner marketing. I want to talk to the AI experts. I want to talk to. Well, the lights just turned off on me. All right. We're we're getting ready to clear this out here. But head on over to partner vis a dot co slash podcast. Join the newsletter. Join the movement. Be part of what we're building. We'd love to have you as part of it. So that's it for me. Now we're to get to what everyone is really excited for here. I'm going to stop sharing. And that's from hearing from.

Maisa and Melissa. So I addressed some of the challenges. I want to hear from you in terms of how you, your teams are addressing these challenges. But before we do that, I'd rather start on a positive note and just thinking through what does success look like? And I'd love to know, Melissa, we'll start with you. You know, at Cscaler, how are you defining success today? And then maybe how has that changed over the last couple of years?

Melissa Nacerino (10:23)
Yeah, great question. And really important for us to think about as well on the journey, not only from where we came from to where we are now, but obviously where we are now and where we're going. From a partner marketing perspective, and when we specifically think through those success metrics, or what success looks like, I think there has been a very important evolution. I mentioned I've done this job a few times.

And what I would say is we're really moving from those marketing activities to more of a focus on business outcomes. That doesn't mean that we don't have activities aligned to the outcomes. But if I go back a number of years, when we would think about success, a lot of these things were going to be for lack of a better term, kind of that top of funnel or number of people we touched. But

Really now what we're seeing is partner marketing as an extremely important and strategic pillar in our overall business planning. How are we truly supporting the partners to drive successful outcomes? So that's definitely one that I see. I think the other is on pipeline health. So again, we talk about leads, we talk about conversion, we talk about follow-up, but really having our partner marketers.

be experts in understanding pipeline health. So it's not just about top of funnel. It's not just about creation. It's absolutely about that creation and conversion. But again, understanding, do we have enough pipe coverage? What are our conversion rates? What can we do as partner marketers to accelerate pipeline and conversion? And I know that you touched on some of these things. So I think those are two big areas that I'm definitely seeing more of a paradigm shift.

from what partner marketing was many years ago to the role that we're playing today in the overarching go-to-market strategy for our businesses and for our partners.

Rick Currier (12:33)
Why I love it because I mean that just telling me we're getting more strategic in terms of how our perception of partner marketing within the organization. My ESA is that different at service now or what are you seeing?

Maisa Fernandez (12:45)
No, I echo everything Melissa said. I think that the reality is, like at ServiceNow, we view our partners as very much an extension of our sales team, as our innovation team. And so we are heavily invested in growing the partner ecosystem and their businesses so that they can be successful. thinking of it as a partner first lens, right? We have to go into

what we do ensuring that we can make that partnership successful from both sides, right? And really understanding ⁓ how that will work. ⁓ I think Melissa alluded to that quality pipeline. How do we drive really great quality pipeline? I think I put in the chat earlier, the partner marketing teams I've known of

The old days were known for spaghetti on the wall, a lot of awareness. Like we were just never able to show results and measurement of the activities that we were driving because we were so heavily reliant on that partner to do the work. Now I'm seeing a massive shift in that trust level within the companies that are partnering.

to actually build strategies together to align to the business outcomes that Melissa talked about earlier. So, you I think that is leading to faster deal conversion, but also bigger deal opportunities that we're driving and longer opportunities for services with our partners, at least from a ServiceNow perspective, ⁓ to create a lot more longevity in that ⁓ customer management lifecycle for the partner.

⁓ Yeah, we definitely see very similar issues and opportunities across the board. There is definitely a maturity that is coming about in the industry, which is great.

Rick Currier (14:50)
Maisa, I'd love to get your opinion on how do we scale this as we look for business outcomes and pipeline health. One to many is efficient, but lacks personalization and nuance that partners expect. And then one to one is impactful, but it could be slow and hard to scale. So what are your teams doing to be able to scale despite some of those challenges of personalization versus efficiency?

Maisa Fernandez (15:15)
Yeah, I think from a partner marketing perspective, like it's always been hard for us to be rigid in this space, right? You need money to do partner marketing. You need your partner to be partner marketing ready, right? They need to be marketing ready, not market ready, right? And so what that means is that they need to be able to ⁓ be ready to sell whatever it is you're going out to market with and not just be ready to or wanting to sell and you're building out that...

⁓ And so, first and foremost, just making sure that the capacity and capabilities are there. But from a partner marketing perspective, in order to scale, you really need to assess your business, right? If you are heavily weighted on a one-to-one strategic alliance perspective, and you need to scale your business, you need to focus on the channel. But you don't want to do that in a generic way.

You want to be able to ensure that you're giving that partner a joint value proposition that lands and differentiates the partnership. You want to be able to that partnership the ability to actually give marketing materials to their customers that land with their voice and tone. ⁓ So being able to leverage tools like GEN.AI ⁓ and marketing tools that are available in the market.

that can help us scale with a little bit more rigor and boundaries is super important. It's not about slapping a logo on an ebook and sending it out. And it's also about multi-touch attribution and touch points that we're providing the partner so that we can work that customer down the funnel, not just through one specific activity.

Rick Currier (17:06)
You know it's funny. I actually got a question from someone in the audience and by the way, I'm doing my best to watch the chat, but if you have any questions for the panelists here, feel free to just. There's a Q &A button. Melissa, the question is round. How important is it to track these conversions from MQL to SQL to QSO conversion? How is your team kind of set up for that? How important to my is is talking about the importance of working partners.

That's also really hard to do with some of these partners. and the lights came back on. Here we go. But I'd love to ask you just about the conversion tracking that Maisa was just talking about.

Melissa Nacerino (17:42)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ It is one of the most important and probably frustrating topics from a partner marketing perspective, because the beauty of an indirect model is that we're really creating this extension of our own sales team. Now, the drawbacks from a partner marketing perspective is we don't necessarily directly own all of those conversions in our system of record. And that's going to be the partners. ⁓ From that specific question of

Of course, if our leads are generally routing, these are all of the data points that we want to look at. We want to look at top of funnel. We want to look at conversion. know, Maisa mentioned, hey, we're increasing our deal size. We want to decrease number of days to close, all of these different metrics. So certainly that traditional funnel metric of leads to MQLs to SQLs pipeline is an important lens to look through.

But partner marketing is nuanced. So a lot of times that's not going to tell the whole story. It's not going to give us all the data points that we want or we need to assess how is our business doing. I'm a very big believer in looking through multiple lenses when it comes to metrics. There's not going to be one silver bullet that tells you all of the answers.

We really need to be able to look cross-functionally of all of the things we're doing. I think, May, as you mentioned, like awareness, enablement, those are going to have different metrics than some of the pipeline. Are we looking at deal registration? We draw the nexus between the context and the accounts we touched with partner marketing and a deal registration coming in. That's not going to follow your traditional marketing funnel.

but that is going to give you the finger on the pulse of I'm investing in dollar and what happened. ⁓ I think that it's also one of those areas where there's a lot of debate because we're not talking about direct attribution. We're talking about introducing an influence model, but we're being very honest with ourselves. We're not saying we created this from scratch. What we're saying is,

we're looking broadly at the investments we're making in what partners we're making and the outcomes that that is delivering. And from there, we could start to peel back the, we can look at things like at the campaign level and the conversion level, but it's so important. And I've had a lot of these conversations with a number of different CMOs that have the same thing. How do we measure partner marketing? How do we do this? And I tell them very honestly,

If you think you're going to measure partner marketing from your traditional direct marketing funnel, that's not it's not going to happen. You could pretend you can create all the pretty dashboards you want, but it's not going to be the complete story. So I think again, that traditional funnel is important, but it's not a litmus test. When it comes to that metrics ROI measurements, we really need to understand the data. ⁓

The other thing I'll say on just kind of data ROI measuring the newest or newer buzzword is, you know, I'm data driven. I know data, I know the analytics, but what I've often found is we have a lot of dashboards. So we can have a lot of people that know how to read a lot of numbers, but is it good or is it bad? Context. comes down to context. I, and I think that's the biggest thing we can do is

from a partner marketing perspective, it's not just the numbers, it really is putting it into context to say, are we doing better or are we doing worse? Is this performing better or worse? Is this meeting the marker? Is it not? Because at the end of the day, we want to know where to put our dollars and what activities in which partners, and back to kind of that understanding the outcomes. So definitely a nuanced area. ⁓

And I'm very passionate about and not promising that we've solved everything, but I think again, we need to give ourselves a little bit of grace and also the fortitude to stand up and say, our data is going to look different because our model is different.

Rick Currier (22:09)
So I kind of a two part follow up ones from an audience member. You know, just there it's nuanced. There's multiple lenses metrics everywhere. Is there a number one top metric that you're holding your teams to? And the second part of that question is knowing there's nuance and multiple lenses and its fluency model. What advice do you have for people out there that have to communicate this up to executive leadership or maybe someone from a finance background that doesn't understand the nuance?

Melissa Nacerino (22:36)
Yeah, so I actually have a very similar answer to I think both of those questions and it, I do for my team, we look at a number of different things, but we're going to start with the business numbers. So you kind of touched on, hey, they might be in finances, might be an executive QBR and you may not even have the time or the space to start drilling in to all of the metrics that marketing has.

The question I believe most executives want to answer is again, are we making the right investments and the right partners in the outcomes? So for my team, we started a very high level, which is the investments we're making in the partners and the overarching business outcomes. Now, that's not saying my marketing was effective, but that is answering the question, are we doing, directionally doing the right things? And it is also in terms that everybody understands, which is our business terms.

What is our ACV and TCB? What is our pipeline? What is our conversion? And of course, we also look at the deal registration as another lens there, but at the highest level, that is where we are focused when it comes to that executive conversation. And then we can start going down from there and truly drilling into the specific investments, specific campaigns, specific initiatives.

I am always starting with the business goals. Cause on the flip side of that, you can have a marketing campaign that performs really well, but what if we're not performing well? So it's kind of like when marketing wants to take a victory lap, if you know, perhaps the, didn't meet our overall numbers kind of thing. So I do think that it is very important to keep it at the business level to start.

And then we can kind of go from there and tell the story of contributions from a marketing perspective.

Rick Currier (24:30)
Yeah, it makes sense. Thanks Melissa. My ESA I want to want to pivot a little bit and ask along the lines of resources, because I know a lot of teams out there. They're either being pressed on resources or they're working with partners that just frankly don't have a lot of resources, whether it's it's budget or just lack of team members. You know, from your teams perspective, how are you structuring programs or process so that you know programs aren't overloading your partners that you're making sure that you're offering programs that are going to fit?

despite the resources they might have available to them.

Maisa Fernandez (25:01)
Yeah, that's such a great question. you know, we get excited inside of the organization. We want to throw a bunch of stuff at our partners because we want them to have a lot of options and opportunities. But, you know, going back to the business outcomes, going back to our business outcomes and the partners business outcomes, and those can be very different. Right. And I think it's so important for us to understand that, you know, our measurements.

or what we are looking at as to who wins and how is super important. So as we walk into that partnership, if it's a one-to-one partnership, it's so important to understand that. But even at scale, understanding what's motivating the partner so that as you're building out programs, ⁓ they're not only useful, but they're productive to their end goals, right, and their end business goals.

perspective of resourcing, we're a slim team. ⁓ We handle quite a bit and we often shock our executives when we start to have some of these QBRs because we're doing so much. But the reality is that we don't have a choice because oftentimes due to the fact that we cannot prove exact ROI.

We will be underfunded. This is just the nature of what partner marketing and the nature of what we do. ⁓ Now, what we have done inside of the organization is we have relied on agencies, we have relied on vendors to help us ⁓ spread the love and spread the love to our partners. So we actually have a program called our Demand Center where we bring in

partners like Partner Vista and other vendors that can support our partnerships. And our partners can opt in to leveraging those. They can do that at 100 % cost to them. They can do that through a PDF program where we split the cost and next year we're gonna be rolling out our MDF program which will potentially allow for 100 % of that.

cost to be paid for if the ROI ⁓ and the proposal is approved by our teams. that allows us essentially, we've got what's called an, I'll call it, our Demand Center is essentially an agency franchise. And these agencies are across the globe. They do all sorts of things. have the ability to run events. They have the ability to run DemandGen, LeadGen.

awareness campaigns, all sorts of things that a partner might want to lean into, but they're all ServiceNow brand approved. So they have not only the rigor of knowing how to work with us, but they also have the knowledge of the programs that are available to them inside of the organization that our partners can leverage if they don't know about them, right? That's super, super important.

Rick Currier (28:13)
Yeah, it's funny. One thing I keep hearing come up, I've been all around the Bay Area this week talking to people is just how important education enablement is. You know, especially with teams are low on resources ⁓ just to get them to lean in and understand what's available and that really helps scale things.

Maisa Fernandez (28:31)
One other thing we just rolled out with in January is our partner marketing experience. And this is essentially like our front door to all things ServiceNow Marketing. And so our partners are able to self-serve not just in, here's a link to go do something. We're teaching them how to do that first through our partner marketing institutes. So we actually have a learning framework ⁓ to understand, how to do partner marketing, like 101, even if you are a partner and you don't have a partner marketing on staff.

We know there's a lot of partners out there in the ecosystem that are in that stage. But then we also have our Deloits and our Accentures, our top GSIs that do a ton of work with us, but also need a little help from us to ⁓ bring down the noise, right? And really understand what's available to them, how they can maximize their ROI and all of the investment with us. ⁓

We've done that in this learn, build and activate methodology within the partner marketing experience. And I think that's helped us accelerate a lot just from an enablement perspective to our marketers on the other side.

Rick Currier (29:41)
I want to dive into the conversion challenge. ⁓ I think earlier we talked about pipeline health being one of the key things we're looking at. I'm hearing from a lot of folks out there, there's a stalled pipeline, leads aren't converting, we're getting a lot of MQLs that are going nowhere. Melissa, what is your team doing to make sure that we are getting pipeline health, that we are converting leads? Are you seeing anything work, whether it's your team calling in the leads directly or leads you're generating for your partners?

Melissa Nacerino (30:10)
Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of comes back to what I was sharing where we were very activity focused and how do we really hone in on those outcomes? Because if we're activity focused, we move on to the next thing. And that's also a little bit of human nature, lots of stuff, lots of activities, lots of partners. For my team, and we're in the midst of our annual planning right now, I'd like us to do less things better.

versus lots of things. But to talk specifically to kind of that conversion, it starts with the interlocks and the partnerships even internally. So if I do go back to a little bit more of that traditional funnel where we have our SDRs or BDRs that are calling, you know, I always like to try to put myself into somebody else's shoes. If you are a BDR and you are just getting these leads routed to you blindly, okay, maybe I can get to that all of them, maybe I can't.

Maybe I'm going to lean on my tried and true script, but especially when we're working with partners, whether that's our technology alliance partners, our systems integrators, our solution providers, more often than not, we have a very specific message that we talk to the prospects about that got us to kind of open that door. So we've really spent a lot of time in the pre-planning.

Again, with our inside sales team, with our account, with the partners as well, when we're here and we're generating that top of funnel, what are the steps that we are going to take to focus on conversion? And it's hard because again, we're moving on to the next thing. Something else is happening. And that follow-up and that commitment to that strategy is a little bit less tangible than my event.

were my thing. We've definitely done certain things like playbooks, trainings, but also bringing our teams into the fold a lot earlier on. If you feel that you have skin in the game, if you know what the XYZ conference was really about and we were highlighting this great integration with these other partners, well, now I feel a little bit more capable.

And also eager to say, I'm going to call down on these or we're going to follow up. I think some of that has to do with interlock and preparation. And then we talked about things like the nurture streams. Not everybody is ready for a follow-up either. So then it comes to these, you know, these emails and calls and things like that. So how do we better bake in some of those nurtures and scoring and things like that? ⁓ And I'll say to kind of wrap it all around.

Maisa, you touched on this, that account space marketing, but when we are working with our partners, a big focus for my team continues to be what is the account alignment? What is the account mapping? Who are we targeting? Why are we targeting them? So even before we get to the conversion, are we doing the hard work upfront?

to make sure that we're actually targeting the right end users, the right customers with the problems that we know we can solve and using things like AI or modeling or propensity to buy to actually give us a leg up at the front end of the engagement that also helps to contribute to a better conversion rate overall. So I think that there's a lot of areas and it is about discipline that to keep

with that discipline of this might've happened three months ago, but we're still getting quality pipeline from it. We're not just moving on to the next thing, because we're adding so many hooks and milestones along the way to make sure that we're getting the most out of our investments. And quite frankly, that we're doing the best we possibly can for our partners, which is delivering joint pipeline and obviously converting that.

Rick Currier (34:24)
Melissa, I want to go a little bit deeper on the ABM side because I actually got a question from the audience around aligning with the partners on an ABM approach. It sounds like you're doing that very early internally. Are you doing that also with the partners early on? what can you tell us about the alignment on an ABM approach?

Melissa Nacerino (34:40)
Yeah, there's a few great tools out there that we've been using that gives us some bi-directional information. For those of you who've done this, we've typically done account mapping and spreadsheets. I think we still do. But there's some really good tools that we can use with our partners if they're bought in as well. We've seen this across a lot of our technology alliance partners, some of our solution providers as well. ⁓

done this so successfully as part of a bigger team when there is that commitment. And it definitely comes back to that commitment because it's really easy for us to try to walk in the room and say to the partner, introduce us to all of your customers where they don't yet have a Zscaler. But guess what? We're one vendor of many on their line card that have that same ask. So how do we come with intelligence

resources, make this that two way street. And absolutely, because the best campaigns have been the ones that have the most strategic and the most focus and a lot of the hard work done upfront. And it's not just with partner marketing or our partners. It's our account owners. We have an entire sales team that those accounts are in someone's name. How do we bring them along for the journey as well?

to be very targeted, very focused. And there's all sorts of other things we can lay around if we start thinking about like industries and verticals and messaging. But I will say it starts with doing the work, doing the account mapping, the alignment. You know, a lot of customers buy from multiple partners. So if you ask what partner is in there, a lot of partners are going to raise their hands. So there's also that work to say, well, a partner...

is the most strategic to that customer. Everybody sells something, but which is that? And then making that commitment from our end too, to say, we're going to go in shoulder to shoulder. This is going to be a joint effort, joint initiative, not just, you know, what we call like a jump ball to say, Hey, who can get us in there first? It's really not about that because, know, back to the conversion conversation, there's a lot of times that we're getting in at bat.

but is that converting? So a lot of this account space marketing, account mapping, it absolutely comes down to the hard work that we all need to put in. And then of course that strategy of all of things like the tools, the resources, the campaigns that we can bring to our partners and bring to those end customers to make it a really valuable engagement.

Rick Currier (37:24)
My is so when I ask you about kind of ROI and attribution as we look to close out here, we got a question that aligns with this ⁓ more and the lights are going off. Here we go. It's keeping me on my toes. It's a party, right? Lights on, lights off. The questions around a feedback loop, right? So when we think about ROI and attribution, you know, getting getting data from the partners can be really tough. ⁓ This person's questions is more around the types of programs like are the partners.

You know, are they are they utilizing the programs are putting together? Are they effective? Are they repeatable? Just talk to me a little bit about about the feedback loop between you and the partners. And what have you what are you seeing that's working? What's not working?

Maisa Fernandez (38:07)
Yeah, think, you know, in terms of the feedback loop, you really need to be on top of it. So we have a programs team that rolls out specific programs for our partners. And they're constantly working directly with that partner to assess the status and success of each campaign. Now, when we really come down to the partnership and the different campaigns that we're running, that's really where

the interesting side of success sits, right? It's not just a one thing, it's not just a one activity, it's the many and where those things are converting. And so, from our perspective, giving our partners a door to ask questions and to provide support ⁓ from our side is super critical, right? And so we... ⁓

And we allow that for all partners, not just our strategic partners that we have headcount set against. And so ⁓ we have our partner marketing concierge desk where, you know, if we feel like somebody's out there alone doing their own programs and they need some help, they can request that. But when we're actually creating those programs and those campaigns together, it's so critical to be constantly on top of the, you know, the program success.

and what you're measuring for and what your outcomes are at the very front end. Make sure that you have those KPIs set up front with your partner and understand what both of you want to be focused on and if you're reaching those goals. ⁓ I think one of the things that everyone might laugh at me, but we're actually working towards ⁓

much more visibility and transparency around partner-led leads. ⁓ We're actually in the midst of a massive transformation inside of the organization that is going to be led by the partner marketing experience ⁓ around allowing and incentivizing our partners to upload leads and to make sure that we are, for us, source to attribution is really critical.

for the partner. It's really where the partner gets the most out of the partnership. And so we want to make sure that at the very front end of their activity, they're able to get that source distribution. Net new logos, net new ACV are also critical to us, right? And so we build programs and campaigns to support the partners to reach those goals. And then we incentivize them on top of that.

So it becomes a bit of a full circle. And that is going to now allow us a lot more information of which campaigns are working, which activities are working, and which are not, right? ⁓ So we definitely need to ⁓ throw out the idea that ⁓ our impact is not measurable. I think that's a load of BS nowadays. And Agenda AI is going to change all of it.

Rick Currier (41:28)
Hondo on the chat said, only laughing with you, not at you. So you have the support of folks on the call today. I do want to leave enough time for the giveaways at the end, but I also want to give you both the opportunity for any closing thoughts, advice. I know we talked about a lot of challenges. We certainly didn't get a lot of my questions because we got some great questions from the folks on the call. So thank you for that. But Melissa, for you first, any closing thoughts?

Melissa Nacerino (41:54)
Yeah, I think it's just a really healthy conversation for us to have as partner marketers, whether you're on the partner side, you're on the vendor side, because as my ESA said, there is some stigmas associated or crutches that I think, we can't do that because again, at the indirect model. But rather than saying we can't, think it's just our, we have data, we have metrics, we are going to show you the efficacy of our work.

It just might not look like the metrics that our direct marketing team uses. And that's okay. So the more we can iterate and think through, how do we get to the outcomes? How can we measure better understanding those nuances and always keeping that open mind to say, it's okay. If it doesn't look this way, because that's not the route to market. That's not how our business is running, but it doesn't.

give us this carte blanche to say we don't have any metrics because yes, that's just BS. We do have metrics and we want to demonstrate not only the value of partner marketing, but the value of our route to market, the value of the indirect model and what that is bringing to the business. So I think for me, that is one of the key elements of partner marketing because it's probably been the biggest gap historically, but

The way that we can look at data, the way we can slice and dice different things, the way we can introduce an influence model at the account level. These are all amazing data points for us to be able to use. And then, you you mentioned that so many different things, but around how do we scale? How do we support? I do believe that with, you know, as AI continues to mature and become more and more mainstream,

that there's going to be so many more tools and resources at our disposal to really help us all scale, whether that's again on the vendor side, on the partner side, but how are we really looking at the newer resources that we have now at our disposal and to start integrating those in our longer term plans to enable us to drive that scalability for our customers, our prospects, and of course our business.

Rick Currier (44:17)
Love it. Thank you, Melissa. Melissa?

Maisa Fernandez (44:18)
Yeah, mean, I think all up there's a lot that's happening in this space. I think keeping on top of it, and I think this year we're going to start to see a lot of those changes coming through. Agendic AI is changing the game and it's changing the game really quickly for what success is going to be really looking like for all of us. And I think we need to be...

on top of all those changes. And we need to be willing to pilot and to test and ⁓ to make mistakes this year out of any, right? I think it's so critical for us in order to ⁓ be successful in our efforts. We're already rolling out ⁓ agentic AI for lead scoring, ⁓ deal-reg and partner lead scoring, I mean.

Deal Reg and customer success story creation. So there's a lot that can be done and that is being done at an astounding rate. So just keeping up with all of the ⁓ tools and opportunities to make our partners more successful is going to be critical.

Rick Currier (45:33)
Awesome, well, I just want to say thank you both for your time. I know it's a busy season right now with a bunch of events going on and priorities and but it's been wonderful to hear your perspective on what's not working out there and then what your teams are doing to overcome those those challenges. And thank you to everybody on the chat. I mean, I had the whole list of questions here. I hardly got to any of them because you all had some great questions and I wanted to prioritize those. So thank you everyone. We are going to move on to the fund giveaways. So let me bring this up here. ⁓

I did a random number generator for the registrations and we got some fun giveaways and then another shout out to join the podcast. Okay, so first up we have LeadScale. They're a great lead, ⁓ listen here's the reality, we gotta go beyond lead suppliers these days. This is a lead management platform helping you engage prospects at every stage of the journey.

I really love these guys because two things. One, they're simplifying it for the marketer. They have a massive marketplace. You can source leads from all across the industry. But they're doing that in a transparent and compliant way. And I've been in Legion for 20 years. There's some shady stuff going out there. And I think the more transparent we can be with marketers, the better. And these guys are doing it. ⁓ Matt Levine from Lead Scale has given away a $100 gift card. Thank you, Matt. And I believe, Melissa, you're going to be the announcer of our Lead Scale winner.

Melissa Nacerino (46:58)
Yes, so the winner of this $100 gift card is Brian DIrking of Databricks.

Rick Currier (47:05)
Woo.

There we go. I feel like Databricks is winning everything these days. That might be unfair. Alright, next up we have Peel. Peel is an AI conversation platform. ⁓ Really great way to engage and qualify prospects along the journey. I think it's really cool about Peel is they're not just sourcing buying signals.

you know, to help convert leads, but there's a lot more we can do with that in terms of creating market research, creating crowd-sourced content. So some really cool things that they're doing in the industry. They're giving away two months of free access to appeal, plus some cool swag. So a great way to test out the product and, you at the very least, you can generate some cool content out of it. And they're giving away this twice. So we have two winners. Maisa, over to you.

Maisa Fernandez (47:54)
Well, I am super excited. A, I've seen Peel and it's amazing. So I hope I'm saying this name right, but it's Cassie Kidrich of Cisco. So congratulations. And then Kiriana Stukas of Shopify. You guys will be thrilled. It's such a cool product. So I think it's amazing.

Rick Currier (48:21)
Love it. And I didn't say this before, but I will follow up personally with each of the winners and connect you with these folks. So nothing that you need to do. Expect that in the next couple of days. But ⁓ yeah, please let us know how the peels go. It's been fascinating to watch these in action. So all right. Next up, I need to pronounce this name right because she's a friend of mine. It's Iiga Partner Marketing. ⁓ Christina Carson said if you don't know her, she's been in partner marketing for years. She's another expert in space. She's a wonderful person.

She's launched a media agency specifically focused to help partner marketers. I've always seen that as a challenge with lot of the folks I worked with and that lot of the media agencies out there helping ⁓ buying on behalf of partner marketers. They just don't understand partner marketing. Christina does and this outfit does, so she's a great resource. Giving away a $100 gift card plus a free consultation. She works with a of people. She knows what's working and not working out there, so great resource. ⁓

Melissa, over to you for the announcement of this winner.

Melissa Nacerino (49:22)
Yes, Rick. ⁓ So this winner is from AWS and is Mike Woodburn. So congratulations, Mike, on your gift card and consultation.

Rick Currier (49:36)
Very cool. And coincidentally, think Christine is already doing a lot of work with AWS. So she could probably fill you in on what's working across the organization too. All right. Last winner, but not the last thing I have for you is a giveaway from Near Future. They're a full service video production and content services company. If you go to partnervisa.co, we have a video at the top there, a teaser video. These guys helped create it. And not only do I think it's awesome, and bragging for myself here, but

I think what's really cool is like it didn't take any lift from my end, right? So they made it very easy to create something very quickly. So as we think about partnerships, low resources, cost effective, this is your outfit to help you with that. They're giving away a cool swag gift basket, including a Yeti mug, which I have one I love. I take it camping with me and use every morning. ⁓ Maisa, this is you.

Maisa Fernandez (50:30)
Amazing. So congratulations, Amy Gelpe of Entrust.

Rick Currier (50:36)
All

right. Yeah. I hope you take a camping. That's what I like to do. All right. Last one. Partnership leaders and outfit. think many of us are very familiar with a huge and still growing community of partnership professionals. They just had their big catalyst event in May. It was a smashing success. Started off as a digital community. And but now they do many face to face events and not just big ones.

nationally, but also regional ones too. So it's a great outfit to get connected, learn a lot, right? You know, we're a community first approach. So I love that fact that these guys helped sponsor us because I believe everything that they're doing. They're giving away everyone on this call an ecosystem compass report 2025. You just head on over to ecosystem compass.com and grab your free copy. And just thank you to all the launch sponsors. Again, I've been humbled by the support from from the community, both from buyers and sellers.

You guys are awesome. That's it for the webinar panel discussion. Thank you, Maisa and Melissa for joining. Thank you for everybody for contributions. I even saw my wife was dropping notes in the chat there. Thank you to my wife. You know, she's been a huge supporter, not only the overall business, but also just everything we're doing the podcast. She's now my producer. She's my IT expert. She's been helping me take that show on the road. So.

Thank you Heather. I appreciate that and thank you for everybody and look forward to hopefully talking to you soon about Partner Vista.

Melissa Nacerino (52:03)
Thanks so much, Rick.

Maisa Fernandez (52:04)
Thanks for having us, Rick, and great discussion.

Rick Currier (52:07)
Awesome, thanks guys, take care.

Maisa Fernandez (52:09)
Bye.