Partner Marketing Priorities for 2026 with Hondo Lateef Lewis

Transcript: Hey man, happy new year. Happy new year. How are you? Well, good. Busy. I mean, I had to think about it for a second because I think we've only been back for a full week, but it seems like a full month. Yeah, mean, busy is probably an understatement. I probably have never been this busy in the first week of the year in a very long time. So it's good. The conversation has been great. And I think everyone's jazzed for 2026. Yeah, it's funny you say that because I feel like coming out of reInvent, reInvent was the first week of December. Everyone had what they thought were like two weeks back and things were kind of shut down. But everyone I talked to those two weeks, it seemed like we did two months worth of work in two weeks. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, a lot of our customers and a lot of people that I was speaking to directly, we had to push and that's why. this first week was so busy is because they had to push a lot of that because they had timelines that they just were, you know, stretched into. Yeah, yeah. So I know you and I were both at reInvent. We probably had 50 different conversations with partner marketers across every partner type. What was the show like for you? What did you hear? Tell me about your experience. The reInvent experience was awesome this year. And I think even more so than other years. I think because this the the hype, the AI hype was in the air that it was for 2025. And people were energized. People are excited about where AI is taking their businesses, the implementation. And I think that's probably one of the things we'll talk about going into 2026 is that we're moving from kind of testing into actual, you know, putting it into play, know, putting AI into play into their operations. and seeing where that goes. Now thinking about some of the specific conversations you had at reInvent with partner marketers, what were some of the top challenges you feel like people were facing this year heading into the new year and what's working or how are people prioritizing? And feel free to take that kind of wherever you want. I don't know exactly what you guys thought about. I mean, look, I think it came down to the challenges. They're not so much different year over year, quarter over quarter, but I think there's the complexities of what AI implementation Rick Currier (02:20.17) into their own individual workflows, into their partnership workflows, into what that meant from a, you know, how that played into their day to day, right? And I think because of the hype that was out there and the pressure to really move these companies forward, when you think about the hyperscalers out there, when you think about the system integrators and just the ecosystems that are pushing AI forward, I think was more the... biggest challenge and you could call it a priority as well is calming the chaos, right? It's just like quieting the noise so that you can actually implement and that you could actually work. So I think another real challenge was timing because things are moving so fast and they're being asked to do a lot more with less. So timing and program execution, working in that kind of co-partner fluidity was important and in a focus. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. think from my end, were kind of two main challenges I saw a lot of partner marketers face kind of in two buckets. One is around attribution, which has always been the biggest challenge. And the other is kind of around fragmentation, which I want to dive into later. But from an attribution standpoint, you know, it's funny, I had a Carlos Roman on earlier this year and that was kind of my thing. was thinking through some of these challenges was hearing and then relating that to some of the podcast guests I had on. And so Carlos was awesome because he said, you know, I have this quote here, I think he said, you can 10x your resources without 10xing your cost. So there's this multiplier within partner marketing if you can do it right. But the challenge is attribution and doing more with less, like you said. And I also had Greg Portnoy on from Euler. He's got one of the partner relationship management platforms out there. And he was saying partner teams are driving 30 to 50 % of business revenue, but they're only getting a 10th of the headcount of a traditional sales team. You know, and so here are, have this organization that's driving all this revenue, but they're getting a fraction of the resources, whether that's headcount, budget, you name it, tools to do their job. You know, and a lot of that comes back to attribution. And, you know, just to being able to, you know, pinpoint is this, this, you know, partner source, is this partner influence and being able to attribute it. And that was what Greg went down that rabbit hole is just how hard it is even today with all these tools out there to pinpoint the successful job that we're doing. Rick Currier (04:43.83) and tie that back to the resources we need to be successful, even though we're 10Xing our business revenue because of partner marketing. Absolutely. And I think that always comes down to, and from what I hear from our customers, is alignment between marketing and sales. are they aligned? Are they going after the same goal? understanding each other's role in how to obtain that goal. And I wouldn't even just say it's just sales. think Greg pointed out that executive leadership has sometimes a hard time understanding the work that goes into partner marketing. And then you layer on the attribution challenges on top of that. There's a big disconnect. Very big disconnect. Yeah. And I had Cathy on early. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. Not Cathy. I had Catherine Rose on from the channel marketing association, just diving a little bit more in attribution. You know, she said, what does she say? She said over 60 % of partner marketers don't have rigorous ROI on tracking events. despite on average they're spending a quarter million dollars on events alone each year. That sounds like that's on the low end of what they spend on events. Yeah, I know. it's just, I mean, think that's just, even when you have a standalone event to be able to track ROI properly on it, it's just a challenge for partner marketers. Yeah. No, I think that's a reality that they're all dealing with because when we talk about partner marketing, right. And especially when we're talking about as it aligns to events. you're also including field marketing, you're also including sales, you're also including the full partnership team. So like when you look at that, it's like, it's challenging to get full alignment across the team, not only just on your side, but on both sides of the partnership. So there's, lots of challenges and priorities that they have to look at. And I think that what that leads, you know, what, that tends to come back to is just having trust in the partnership. And having part of that trust is just having clear communication, having a path forward of what this looks like, how we're gonna go to market and everyone kind of sticking to the game plan. It's funny about like how sophisticated we're getting with AI and technology and at the same time, the importance is coming back on the trust and relationship simultaneously. Absolutely. And I think the people that are really succeeding are figuring out how to lean in on both simultaneously. And you have this dual motion of Rick Currier (07:04.557) you know, technological advancement to drive scale and efficiency while building trust and relationships because we're not going to solve the attribution challenge tomorrow. And you have to have that, you know, trust relationship of your executive leadership, your partners, your internal field teams just across the board to be able to execute and scale. For sure. Now, so, I mean, what, what are you seeing? what, what are, what are the priorities that you're seeing for 2026 coming out of 2025? what we learned from the reinvent event that we went to, but also the events and the conversations that we are involved in coming out of, you know, a lot of the hyperscaler events throughout the year. Like, what are you seeing as a priority for 2026? Yeah, I think one of the biggest priorities that I got out of reinvent and some of these other conversations we had in that little two weeks that seemed like two months heading into the holiday was, you know, it's aligned with the challenge of fragmentation in the sense that, you know, partner marketers do a lot of activity. They do events, they run webinars, run Legion white paper content syndication, producing content. And they can do all that with just one partner on a quarterly basis and then you multiply that by three, six, 12 partners, right? And you just have these siloed across the board. So obviously that's a challenge from a successful scale standpoint because, you know, it's not always an apples to apples conversation in terms of how you're running programs, how you're executing. And so a lot of them, what I've seen is there's agency bloat, They're working with ton of expert agencies in these little areas. Siloed activities means the data is siloed, and they're constantly having to reinvent the wheel. Every quarter it's, okay, new webinar, new partner, new initiative, new target, I gotta reinvent this and build this from the ground up. So aligned with that priority is how do we think about a more system-led approach to scaling activities? How do I build motions where I can reuse the motion each time? but still be flexible with, let's face it, partners have individual messaging, unique targets, you look at different regions, how they go to market in Germany is completely different than Singapore. But that doesn't mean the motion has to reinvent itself each time. And so I think you and I, these are a lot of the conversations we've been leading with partner marketers is how do we create a structured architectural framework? Rick Currier (09:21.154) where the motion is consistent but it flexes with partner region target initiative, fill in the variables. that's kind of the big priority I think for partner markers is figuring out how to create those reusable motions that scale. as a little advertisement for what we've been doing, we built our own partner ecosystem. So we have best of breed content providers, best of breed Legion providers, LinkedIn, you just fill in the blank and so we can help architect those solutions. find that perfect partner to come in and execute, but in integrated way. And I think just to kind of cap this off, from a priority standpoint, something that we've seen as a best practice, what partner marketers are doing, kind of this dual motion where they'll have an always on motion, quarterly lead generation, let's just put it like that, content syndication. We set up the framework, content can be part of that, but it's kind of an always on motion that can flex with partner and region. And then the other motion is more of an event-driven motion. Okay, we have a big event coming up, right? Well, how are we connecting that with our digital activities? We have a big webinar coming up. know, whatever that moment of time is, what is that reusable motion that's aligned to those moments of time where we can just, again, take that variable, whatever that moment in time is, plug it into our reusable motion framework, and then execute against it. For sure. No, and I think, you know, we've been having the conversations internally and externally with our customers. So... What I'm hearing you say and what we've been kind of communicating to our customers is having that balance or that motion of architecture and orchestration. Because I I think it really depends on the partnership that you're looking at, whether that is a alliance or strategic partnership or a scale or channel partnership. Because those are the nuances there, they're much different. complexities are much different in each one of those. So when you're looking at strategic and alliance partnerships and they're coming out of these tent pole or building up to a tent pole event, maybe it's theirs, call it the AWS re-invent, but a lot of those marketers are now moving into the next quarter and their partnerships are flowing into their event. So moving from a re-invent into a next, into a knowledge with ServiceNow. Rick Currier (11:41.166) you name the event, it's how do you connect those dots? Where's the connective tissue that's connecting everything between each one of these events and sticking with the architecture of the plan that you built in co-partnership? I love how you talk about the nuance, because I think that's, I mean, honestly, that's why we built this business, right? Because there's so much nuance and complexity in it. And to your point, like, you know, how we build a motion for AWS plus, you know, particular ISV plus fill in the distributor. That motion is going to look totally different than if it's AWS plus the ISV plus their system integrator partners. I mean, you can't treat distributors the same as SIs, as ISV. mean, they're all different partner types. And it's funny, in our experience working at these big publishers, how many companies out there are, again, providing best of breed solutions. They might be the best lead gen provider out there. And we've filled our partner ecosystem with them. but they don't necessarily understand the nuance of the partnership types. And then you start to layer in regional influence, know, the way we go to market Germany versus Singapore as an example, start to lay in these other nuances, things get exponentially complex. And you got it coming back to your point, you got to have a trusted partner that can help you navigate that. For sure, for sure. And again, I think it goes back to what I was saying around timing and like that's part of it is like getting all of the regions, know, getting everyone within your region. on the same page, getting people within global regions on the same page, and then moving from each one of those events. look, at the end of the day, from what I've seen and what I've heard from our customers at these events, these events are three to five day kind of filled marketing. They're just in there. This is their go to market. This is where they can have strategic conversations. These are real time, what's working now. How are we gonna move over the next three to six months? How do we need to communicate this above and below with a feed on the street and with the executives? So they're using these not only to, know, to... Rick Currier (13:50.274) to amplify the joint solution, but they're using these events for validation, for execution, and for buy-in from the executive field from both sides of the partnership. Yeah, I love how you say how important it is to get these partners, I use it loosely, because those could be internal partners versus external partners on the same page, and get them in the room together, I think is what you said. So I had Rachel Roundy on from Snowflake, and she came in from a product marketing lens, but she comes from Intel. know which is partner-led growth and you know we were talking about how important the feedback loop is and just you know I think it's especially the partner marketer you know wearing your partner marketing hat just how busy you can get in the day to day in these activities you have to do that you know sometimes you really have to pull yourself out and just ask yourself again system-led growth what system do I have in place to collect feedback from my internal partners my external partners and incorporating that feedback to make sure that these activities are in line, they are scaling. are, again, going back to the trust and relationship. Feedback loops are so important to building that trust and relationship. Absolutely, absolutely. So are we good with some priorities? Do you feel like you've answered some priorities there? I think there's a, know, we could probably go on and on in priorities. mean, where do you want to go next? You know, from a 2026 perspective, I think 2025, we all lived through the hype of AI and gen AI. I think 2026 is now about the practice and putting it, operationalizing it. And I think from what we've done with our business is the implementation of AI to help nurture and help further qualify leads for our customers. to bring context to sales, And bringing that validation and support that sales need. that's what I'm hearing from our customers is like, what's the next step? How can we best support them and how can they best support their internal teams with implementation, going beyond the implementation, but now operationalizing it? Rick Currier (16:09.294) So what is it that they need to operationalize and how are they going to do it and what is that going to mean from an efficiency if there's efficiencies in it? Because with these operationalizing and implementations, it's challenging. There's challenges with everything that you bring to the table. Yeah, especially I think for partner marketers who, and this sounds wrong, but they sit at the fringe of the organization, right? They're not corporate, they're not field, and a lot of times they're siloed off organizations. So for them to operationalize IT investment, that's probably going to be led by corporate or some other entity within the organization. And that's why I love how we're positioned, because we're operationalizing it as an agency. The partner marketers can come in, take advantage of that operationalized infrastructure of AI we're using for nurturing qualification without having themselves to figure out how to get IT involved and get security involved and data privacy, right? They can just focus on the outcomes that we provide, taking advantage of that. And I think we're gonna see more partners out there kind of take that model where, look, we're not gonna sell you an AI platform. We're gonna focus on the outcomes that you need and AI is part of that. It's part of that. Yeah. Absolutely. What else are you excited for for 2026? What's got you? I know we got some big events coming up. It's an almost event season. Yeah, I mean, look, it's always event season. I mean, quarter after quarter. I think what I'm excited for is to continue to build in our own ecosystem. Yeah, because again, going back to outcomes and servicing our customers is just making sure that we always have the best breed of partnership in our ecosystem to serve our customers the best way that we can. So that's what I'm excited for. Excited to bring in folks that can help us with content strategy, that can help us with creating content. Can we talk about Rob for a second? Yes. It'll Rob O'Regan. Yeah. So all right. So for the audience that doesn't know, so Hondo and I used to work at Foundry IDG, obviously. for years, we worked with a guy who led their content strategy team called Rob O'Regan. if you went to- Called, named. Rick Currier (18:23.118) Yeah. So if you went to like IDG, or I guess it was Foundry Co after the rebrand, and you wanted a white paper ebook webinar, whatever it was, you would work with Rob's team to develop that cio.com ebook. So, you know, like so many of us, you know, we left Foundry, you know, during the private equity acquisitions and transfers and still a great company. You know, but Rob's out doing his own thing now and he's with, you know, a content agency he's helped build and we're partnered with him. so we get to produce content with Rob again, which is awesome. is pretty awesome. He brings such a great perspective, technology mind to the game that now we get to tap in. We get to allow our customers to, again, that comes back to building trust. We are now giving them a reason to further trust us because we have someone like Rob in the mix with us now. Yeah, and I think that just in models, Going back to the challenge that partner markers have around agency bloat, know, content doesn't sit in a silo. You're typically integrating it in a program, right? And so, working with Partner Vista, you know, we could develop a webinar. We can bring in Rob's team to be a moderator or turn that into an e-book. We can go out and run leads and audiences in the best places. Like, we're building the best of breed structure so partner markers don't have to work with 20 different agencies to execute. We understand the nuance and complexity. Right. I, again, going back to the, to the challenges, that's one of them is like, or I should say pain points of marketers is that they don't want to have to work with 20 different vendors. They'd like to reduce that and we're, you know, we, we get a sense of that and we're trying to solve for that. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I'm excited for the events this year. mean, reinvent was, I think it just showed just kind of how big community is right now. And that's mirroring kind of what we're, we're trying to do and never go to market alone in the community. We're building like, there's just this. hunger for personal relationships, to see people in person, to connect, understand, my challenges might not be unique. Other people might be facing this. And then to learn, well, how are you facing it? What are you doing? What's working? And then just to be able to be part of that, I know we did the happy hour meetup for Never Go to Markle and ReInvent. We're probably gonna do that again at Next and Nvidia's, GTC and the rest. So I'm very excited for community. Rick Currier (20:43.542) our partner marketing broader community is very hungry for it. They want to meet with other marketers that are working at tech, that are focused on alliance and distributors and fill in the blank and just talk to them and hear what's working and not working. Yeah, I get the sense of that in speaking with a lot of our customers and partner marketers just out there. There's a hunger for it. I think it will just take work out of it. there's a hunger for it in general, just as human beings. I think that we need that connection. People yearn for it. I think that we've spent a lot of the last decade in front of technology and letting technology lead us. But I think at the end of the day that people want to reunite with humans. They want to interact. They want that touch. They want to be hugged. They want to see someone smile. there's something that energizes you. as much as this is about business, I think it's also just about being a human. And that's where the trust also comes into play. So when you can have that one-to-one interaction or a group interaction, I think that kind of feeds into the energy of what they're doing professionally. And when you can tap into that, that energy is enormous. And I know kind of putting you out on the spot here, but You know, we talked about doing maybe actually a community service project here in the Denver area with our local partner marketers. We should probably set that up for Q1, don't you think? Yeah, I think we should. I mean, it's always needed out there. There's never a lack of need, whether that's your local food bank or your soup kitchen. There's always a need. for volunteers. So yeah, think that we should set it up for key one and, you know, and probably set a goal for ourselves that maybe it's a minimum of two, you know, every year. And hopefully that can build to quarter after quarter or every six weeks or doing something and just implementing something that has legs that's happening within our community that we're affecting it positively. Yeah, I love it. And we're trying to, I think, open the doors back to the Slack community. We have the doors closed right now with our founding members. Rick Currier (22:56.718) 50 partner marketers in there for some great companies like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Google, to some startups that are partner marketers of one doing it all. And so there's a really good mix of people in there. But I think we're getting ready to open the doors and hopefully that will take off and just kind of add to this community that we're building. Yeah. mean, look, the feedback has been great. Everyone loves to collaborate with one another, connect, share ideas, not have to reinvent the wheel, ask questions like, hey, what vendors for this specific outcome are you guys using? the community, it's coming to life right in front of us. It's definitely growing. We're learning a lot. So this has been a great journey thus far. It's been a hell of a journey so far. I'm excited where it goes, what happens with our business, the community, partner marketing in general. Did we miss anything? I know we covered a lot. What else on your list? Look, I think we covered a lot. Yeah, what else? What else is there? You know, other than to just go? Yeah, I mean, it's it's exciting. I'm excited for, for us to grow as a business. I'm excited for the community that we're building. I'm excited for with all the partner markers that we're working with. And then I just just a shout out to how great they are. I mean, you know, you and I have been working with b2b marketers for decades. And just these folks that have to do so much with so little and yet they're so willing to take risks. And that's what I just That risk part is what I love about it. They're all like, everyone's an entrepreneur in partner marketing. really are. They're all running their own businesses. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the risk factor is just innate, right? It's part of who they are. It's part of the DNA. It's part of the culture of partner marketing, of partnerships in general. Because again, partner marketing is one aspect of the full partnership team. So it's good to... feel the energy of partnerships. Well, thanks for coming on. It's an exciting year. Excited to take this with so many of our customers and partners. And let's get out there and do it. Let's do it. Cheers, man. Cheers.