133 | The ultimate guide to channel marketing

Harry Radcliffe: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Tech Mastery podcast, one that I'm particularly excited about because we have my dear friend and fellow podcast host, Tina O'Dell from Juniper on the podcast. Welcome, welcome.

Tina O'Dell: Welcome. Well, thanks for having me, John and Harry. It's interesting. Normally it's, um, My podcast, which Harry, you are a big part of, uh, but now I'm a guest on yours.

So I have to defer to you guys to set the tone today.

Harry Radcliffe: And I'm going to treat her terribly. Just like she does me.

Jon Busby: It's really difficult going from like a host to a guest, I find. Cause all of a sudden you've got to have an opinion on things. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's a fun transition. I don't know if Tina's

Harry Radcliffe: going to struggle.

I think that, uh,

Jon Busby: let's, let's go straight. That was one

Tina O'Dell: thing. One thing growing up, uh, people never felt that I was shy about having opinions, so I guess this is one instance where it pays off a little bit.

Harry Radcliffe: Well, let's um, that probably leads us nicely into kind of your journey and how you ended up here.

You, uh, why don't you tell the audience who you are and kind of what you've been up to.

Tina O'Dell: Sure, thanks. Uh, so, Tina Odell, uh, I have worked in the, the tech industry for, uh, well over 25 years at this point, started right out of college, uh, working for a software company that sold through a partner channel, and all of the positions that I have held, uh, even one brief stint in the middle that was medical, uh, Um, was still selling through a channel.

It was radiologists who, uh, can't order their own studies, but area physicians order studies on their behalf and they fulfill those studies. So. Everything I've ever done has been on one side or the other of the channel or adjacent to that. Uh, I have experience in the first software company I started at became part of what is Microsoft Dynamics today.

So that was like the first eight to nine years of my career.a The middle, um, Was a six year stint at a, uh, consulting company, uh, that is a local regional, uh, channel partner for several big tech brands. And then the last nine years, I've been with Juniper Networks. So lots of interesting insights, um, with a three year stint at the radiology practice, sort of in the, in the middle of all of that journey.

But I've done all of that from. Uh, lovely Ohio here in the United States, so not in Silicon Valley, you know, not east or west coast, uh, but that just goes to show you how far, uh, tech has come and the fact that, uh, you can work in tech your entire career and be, you know, center of the U. S. and, and not on either of the coast.

Harry Radcliffe: Exactly that. And if you'd like to hear uh, any more of Tina or any more of me, Tina and I, I host our own little podcast called Channel Chats with Tina O'Dell and what we do is, well, we do a lot of things. We, uh, From my perspective, it's been a very, very beneficial learning experience as a young marketer, getting to talk to Tina all the time and going over kind of bit by bit, quite granularly different marketing topics is kind of as if you were doing a degree in the topic, really, but with a lot more hands on expertise that's come from, from Tina's years.

A little less theory and a lot more practical. If you're going to run an event, what do you do this, this, and this some, some stories of where things gone wrong. Some examples of things grow wonderful. Even like I remember she's full of gold, but one thing for events, Tina said was make sure you get tables that are.

Chest high, get high tables. So people are encouraged to stand, mill, mill about and converse rather than sit down, stick in their groups. This type of thing, you don't get that from a degree. Okay. You get that from years of hard graft and Tina's done it. So join us over there at Channel Tats.

Tina O'Dell: Yeah, the thing we're most proud of with Channel Chats is it is exactly what it sounds like.

It's a chat between friends. So Harry and I try to keep it low key. We don't talk down to anybody. It's, it's that discussion we would have over a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, depending on which country you're from, or at the water cooler, and just share some of the wisdom, ask questions, ponder topics. Uh, we spent a lot of time talking AI in recent months, but that's because everybody's talking AI and every conversation it pops up.

But, um, yeah, I would love for people to, to pop in and, and give a listen, give a follow and give some feedback.

Harry Radcliffe: Yeah. Yeah. So your title is director and chief of staff of global channel marketing. That's, that's a mouthful. How did you, uh, how did you get that? Why have you landed a role in both aspects of those things?

Tina O'Dell: Yeah, so it's been interesting. I've, I've done everything from, um, Starting in tech support, uh, to creating and selling marketing to, uh, field marketing and events services, uh, and selling services and professional services and marketing those. Um, when I first came to Juniper, another round of field marketing and then got into channel marketing.

Uh, so drawing on my experience of being in the channel. I am now using those skills to create programs and marketing campaigns and kits, uh, in perspective for our channel partners to leverage and use to grow their business because as they grow, we grow, you know, that is the benefit of selling through a channel, uh, the cheapest staff duties.

Sort of came along as it's an area I'm interested in, you know, being more involved in strategy, uh, budget planning, uh, career pathing, you know, for the team, uh, leadership is an area that I've been very interested in and very involved in over the last six or seven years in helping grow, uh, in internal, uh, Leadership program that we have here at Juniper started out being one of the first recipients in the inaugural year to participate in the program, to being a mentor, to being the director, to fully owning, uh, that program.

So, uh, blending my two passions, uh, working with the channel and strategy and managing change and keeping humans and people. at the center of everything that we do, uh, is, is what brought those two things together.

Jon Busby: Like, you know, you've been both a partner and a vendor and you've kind of gone back and forth a few times, which I think, you know, gives you an incredible perspective.

How do you think that's, before we go into some of the, some of the new year resolutions, because I think that's going to be really important, Harry, like how has that influenced your approach to how you manage your channel and channel marketing overall?

Tina O'Dell: Yeah, that, that's a really insightful, uh, question and certainly.

When I first started my very first job. Um, it was at a software company and we sold through a channel and that's all I knew. I just thought that was the way that companies sold. You build a product, you market a product, you make the training, and you find other people to sell your product. It just made sense to me that when I want to buy.

Toothpaste, I go to a store and there's toothpaste on the shelf. Um, so I didn't think much about the fact that we sold the product through other people. Uh, well, as I got to know our channel partners, because in that first job I was, I started at the very bottom in technical support. And then worked my way into developing training, uh, selling services and renewal services, um, and being much more in tune with having to meet sales goals.

And that's when I really started to learn more about the channel and why you sell through a channel and how you go about doing that. But it also learned, uh, with channel comes great responsibility to still align from, uh, Spider Man because, uh, when you have a channel, you. And, and you're the vendor, you're the company with the product that you need to have positioned and sold through a channel.

There's so many things you need to influence that you do not have direct control over. And there's so much, um, you have stockholders or as it was the case in that first company, we wanted to go public. So we had goals that we were trying to meet so that we could go public and IPO. So everything that you build has to have value in it, and it has to have value not to you, but value to the people that you need to influence.

Um, and that was more second nature in software than in hardware, uh, because in software everything was, um, It wasn't tangible, you know, you're creating code that you're selling and then can be customized and, and turned into whatever the people need it to be on the other side, uh, within a realm of, um, possibilities.

But in hardware, you know, as I, I kind of fell into the Juniper world, I realized that selling boxes of things is kind of like what everybody else is doing and creating some differentiation. And, um, Uh, ways to position yourself differently is limited to some degree by what your box will do that somebody else's box won't do.

So then you have to buffer that with other things. You know, you have to buffer that with great training programs, great incentives and rebates. Um, how we might help you generate leads, uh, that all becomes very important on the channel side of things on from a vendor's perspective and in motivating the channel that person that sat on the other side.

I realize that I've got many, many, many of these technology vendors coming to us, trying to get us to sell their thing with lots of different programs. They're very challenging to understand at times, uh, how you get all your people certified, uh, how you qualify for the best rebates, which distribution partners, uh, to work with that's going to be the most lucrative, you know, for, you know, Your channel company, um, or who have stock, you know, sometimes it's a matter of who can get the product when the thing that became very clear over the years was this tug of war with customers.

You know, customers are supposed to be the people that mean the most to both of us. And each side claims ownership. Of customers, and I would bet anything that a customer would tell you, neither of you own me, you both have to earn the right to have my business. And, um, there's a lot of conflict around who really owns that relationship.

And even though I'm sitting in a technology role right now, um, I would disagree that the technology company owns that relationship. And I would side with the channel partners. And it's from having lived that life and knowing that I'm going to run into people that we have sold to in my local community.

I'm going to see them at, um, sporting events. I'm going to see them at banquets. I'm going to go to kid, go to school with their kids or play their kids at rival schools in sports with my kids. If we are selling to those individuals and living in that same community, and I'm selling them, not just your technology product, vendor company A, but I'm also selling them vendor company C and F and, and H, and I'm the one they're going to come back to when things go south.

And I'm the one that they're going to come to when they have issues. Um, so that's, that's definitely a perplexing piece that. There's still a lot of controversy over. And then the last thing that I would say is I deeply understand the need of the technology vendor to show ROI on things and the channel partners don't always comprehend how important that is.

Or know how to track ROI back to a specific vendor on the things that they do.

Jon Busby: To be, well, there's a lot there, right? Because you've kind of got three conflicting, and I'm always drawing as a triangle in my head here, right? Because you mentioned right at the beginning that, and this I think is, is, is what's changing and we'll come back to this, which is as a channel vendor, I want leads.

And that's how many partnerships go. And it's, Then you mentioned that, you know, a customer may have solutions from four or five. I think, I think, um, Ingram micro, was it Paul Bray? I could begin that name wrong. Um, or Michael Bray, uh, mentioned there, uh, you know, a customer solution or outcome is normally seven different partners, right?

So you've got this one, a channel vendor just wants leads. Then you've got the, um, the fact that a customer outcome needs. Let's say seven different vendors. And then finally you've got this, this conflict of like, well, how do you show ROI? Like it's, it's, it's all kind of in conflict with each other. It's not, you know, how do you write that square or triangle or whatever shape we've just drawn in our heads?

Tina O'Dell: It's, it's incredibly challenging. And I think the solution. That is not very popular is to some degree. We all have to check our egos at the door

Jon Busby: and we have to

Tina O'Dell: realize that none of us are the most important piece of this puzzle and that together we're able to be the solution that ultimately the customer needs.

And at the end of the day. We all need the customer to buy and we all need the customer not to buy just one time, but we need that customer to buy again and again and again and hopefully more and more and more, you know, the, the need for cross sell upsell and service renewals and service commitments, you know, to have that recurring revenue are higher now than they have ever been in the past.

And the type of work that we do. So it's incredibly important to have those trusted relationships, ultimately at the end of the day with a customer. So both the technology vendor and the channel partner both need to find a way to check a little bit of that ego at the door and find a way to work together.

Even when it means that multiple technology vendors are going to be part of a solution that ultimately benefits a customer, and I think that's the toughest pill for everyone to swallow is how do we Except that our MDF might be used at an event where other technology companies are going to be represented.

We don't want that, of course, because we don't want to be displayed side by side with somebody that we're competing against. But from the channel partner's perspective, the customers that they're serving, which are ultimately the customers buying our product, they need to be able to come to that local channel partner and see a little bit of everything, because no one technology vendor can solve every problem.

And they don't have time to go to seven different events to get read into, you know, what each one of those technology products can do. They need to come to one very well orchestrated event several times a year. With the channel partner that they trust, hosting that event, and those vendors, and get their updates, and get some thought leadership, and get some training, because their time is precious and very valuable, and they need to be able to do that.

But that's a tough thing to accept as the technology company. It's a tough thing to let your MDF dollars go towards that, because what if they see us beside our competitor and they choose the competitor instead of us? The question I always like to ask back internally is what if they don't see us beside that competitor and they choose that competitor because they never saw us and never considered us.

Jon Busby: So we've got our first tip there, haven't we, Harry? Yes. We've got our first new year, which is check your ego at the door. That's a big one for us, Busby. Yeah, it's definitely one for us. Yeah. Um, what's, what's, what's going to be our next one? Like what stands out next, Tina, for like, let's, let's start a new year channel resolution.

Tina O'Dell: I think the second resolution, um, is, is to really understand the motivations and drivers of all parties involved. Um, that includes the customer, that includes what the technology vendor is seeking and looking for, and that includes the channel partner. And here's another area that I think a lot of technology companies make a mistake.

You know, as the technology vendor, we like to come in and sit down with partners and say, here's our suite of products. You know, they're the best things since sliced bread. We're leading in this area. Look at our Gartner, look at our CSAT scores, look at our Gartner peer review, all of these things. You should just love us.

Instead of going into that meeting with that channel partner and sitting down and saying, talk to me about what you're looking to do this next year. What does the geography that you sell into and the clients that you sell into look like? What are your biggest hurdles and obstacles? What are customers asking you for?

Do you have, uh, Growth areas in mind. Are you trying to grow into a new geography? Are you trying to sell more into a particular type of company because your environment is rich in that type of company? Are you trying to sell more services and grow your services revenue? What's important to you and why that conversation is so important is because I'm the technology vendor.

Nobody knows my stuff better than I do. Unless I know what that channel partner's goals are and what they're interested in doing, I cannot direct them to the right program. I cannot connect them to the right MDF program. I cannot connect them to the right marketing program that might benefit them or the right training program that might help them grow in a specific area.

So if I go into that meeting and really try to understand what their goals are for the year, And quickly assess, okay, these are the things they're looking to do. I've got 20 things I could present to them today, but I'm going to narrow that down to the 3 that really align well with what they're trying to do.

And we're going to quickly get some synergy around those 3. And we're going to build some plans around those 3. And if I can help that channel partner grow around those three areas or get some traction, then they're going to want to come back and say, Hey, you were really able to help me with those three.

Let's maybe take on a little bit more. What else can we do together? Uh, so I think it's flipping the script a little bit and really going in, um, as Stephen Covey would say, seek first to understand and then be understood. And so I think that's, The second thing is going into those meetings, be less concerned about your agenda and everything you want to spray on the channel partner and understand where they're at and what they're looking to accomplish and use those goals and outcomes that they're seeking to match up to the areas in your program where you have goals and outcomes that you're trying to achieve.

And align those and, and then hopefully naturally that aligns to a customer need that sits there in the marketplace.

Jon Busby: You're the second person to quote that exact line from the seven habits, by the way, on this podcast in the last year. Uh, Tina, the other really interesting part of that particular book, I'm going to focus it around here.

I actually went back to find this particular chapter this year is, is the point it talks around when he's, he's mentioning how he kind of understood how his son was developing. And I think there's, you know, for someone with kids, I think we both got kids here. Um, Tina, like you, there's this pressure to be like, you're not

Harry Radcliffe: loudly dying in the background with a cough

Jon Busby: somewhere.

He's off school today. Um, with a cough, unfortunately, but the, um, he, You know, you have this pressure to be able to kind of get them to develop, like, okay, you don't like sports. I'm going to make you do sports. Um, and actually he uses, I think the baseball analogy and not even an analogy. He tells a story around how, you know, his son wasn't developing and you always need to let them develop at their own pace and kind of what you mentioned there with the channel relationship or the partner relationship is you kind of need to let them talk to you about it.

You need, you know, you can't, we, I think we have this habit of putting like a business plan in front of a partner and being like, fill this in and come back when you can tell us how much ROI you can create. But actually it's so much more complex than that. And we have to let them develop and establish kind of their own route to market.

And we need to embrace it. We need to not sit there and go, ah, it doesn't fit with us. We need, we need 10 leads this quarter. Instead we need to sit there and look at it and say, well, actually you can fill this gap in this ecosystem over here.

Tina O'Dell: yeah, it's so important. And a couple of things come to mind when you say that.

And, uh, the first thing is, uh, someone told me years ago that, you know, It's so much easier to develop from your strengths than it is your weaknesses. So yes, that, that child may not like sports, but maybe they love arts. And so maybe you're pushing them towards the wrong thing and you need to feed their curiosity and their interests around the arts and maybe they become, you know, the top.

You know, in the area, or maybe they become an amazing painter or sculptor or, you know, doing something in acting or on stage. And it's the same with our partner community, you know, our partners have strengths. And if we talk to them about what they're doing, most often they're typically trying to build on the strength that they have to gain more advantage.

They might be working a little bit on a weakness or a shortfall area, but it's so much easier to put, uh, extra resources. Effort or energy, pick your word into your strengths and get 2x, 3x, 4x, the return, than it is to be trying to chip away at your weaknesses, you know, to minimize those and get marginal return from the same effort.

So when you have limited resources, you really need to focus those resources in a way that's going to get you the best payoff. So having those discussions, I think are just a great way to fact find that. Now, the funny story that I'll say is, I, and this is a technique that I used when I was a field and partner marketer, I would go in and do planning with my partners and I would ask all these questions.

And one time when I did this, um, we had scheduled two half day sessions with a partner. I got there in the afternoon. We did half a day, we went to dinner and then we had, um, four hours the next morning. And that first half a day, I never presented anything to them. I simply asked them questions. We sat around a table and I asked them about their salespeople.

How do you comp your people? What are your area? What are your top customers? We just had question after question about. Everything that they do, a lot of curiosity. Um, and part of that was because I used to be a partner. So I know a lot about running a channel business. And then I was asking them and trying to understand.

And that night at dinner, I noticed they were a little standoffish with me and we had dinner and things were easier. And, uh, we had a lot of good conversation at dinner. We had some drinks. The next morning we come in and we start talking again. And finally, they stopped and they looked at me and they said, Why are you asking so many questions about us?

When are we going to start talking about how we're going to plan and what we're going to do together?

Jon Busby: So

Tina O'Dell: then I got up and I went to the whiteboard again. I did not open my laptop or PowerPoint, and I Why boarded out for them everything I understood about their business, how they comp their salespeople, how that could tie in with some incentives that we had the markets that they were already doing well in and how we could go after new markets together and we crafted out a four month plan of Three marketing activities that we would do one, two, and three sequentially that would help us develop leads in an area that they wanted to grow in.

And at the end of that, they were dumbfounded because I was able to whiteboard all of that out in a very short amount of time. But because we spent the time the first day digging into and understanding their business and their interest and I already understood what I had to offer and what those connecting points were.

So then we were able to walk away that day with a four month plan of how we were going to go to market together and try to achieve Mutual results that both of us were interested in and the relationship value just skyrocket.

Jon Busby: Mm-hmm . They went

Tina O'Dell: from being very skeptical of me and why I was there and asking so many questions to anytime you're in the area, come back.

Even if you just want to park in our, uh, conference room and work from here, you're more than welcome to do that. You know, following that, any time we were at events, you know, their two owners would come up and talk to me, you know, they had only been in the meetings for part of the time, but they heard from their staff how well the rest of the meetings, you know, went.

And so there was just a huge amount of respect. And part of that was because. I got to know them, I understood their businesses and their needs and I didn't try pushing them to things that only benefited us. We developed joint goals in areas that benefited us mutually and they ended up having a fabulous year.

They had to do all the execution. I'm not taking credit for that but we just got some really good synergy and they were able to execute on that and have a really great year.

Jon Busby: It's that, it's about being curious and spending time together. Like that's the, that's kind of the core of it is we, we kind of want to, this is, there's this need forever at the moment of creating like very process orientated systems.

Like this person, here's your first 90 days. You do all these things in turn. Uh, and actually I'm seeing some of the most popular and upcoming. Uh, you know, brands are the ones where, you know, the CRO goes and spends a day with a new channel partner to understand what their business is and how it can, you know, impact them.

And that's what stands out for me with your story there, Tina, is like you were curious and you went and spent time with them.

Tina O'Dell: Yeah. And I think the other thing I would use to summarize that, uh, Harry mentioned the top of the call, the master's program that I'm in right now, and it's a, a master's program in organization development and change.

And. The thing that we talk about a lot in how you, uh, plan and drive, um, healthy change, healthy, sustainable change in organizations is you have to go slow. To go fast. And I think that applies here too. You can't just run into that meeting and like you said, get to, all right, we got to quickly document what's our 90 day plan and what are we going to do in the first year and you know, who's going to be accountable for what just fill out the worksheet and go, you got to take some time and be curious and get into the details and get to know each other.

Go slow to go fast, you know, because it pays off in the end that you're going to be able to have a much more tangible, sticky relationship, a more vested relationship and, uh, sticky goals that you can plan around. And they may not always work, but you can go in and you can change. You can dig back into that conversation and say, look, this didn't go the way we thought.

So let's make some adjustments and, and let's go to a different strategy.

Jon Busby: So one question I always have around that, Tina, and I actually asked this to the same, I think it was a CCO, uh, as he was spending time out with a partner. And it kind of comes into one of the questions we have in our talking points here, but we're not going to, we're not going to be able to go into massive amounts of detail on this particular one.

But in that example we used there where you mapped out a marketing plan that was at you three different marketing plans and how that was going to impact things. How do you map spending the time with that partner and justify spending the time with that partner against Kind of the corporate goals, you know, you mentioned kind of ROI before, like how, you know, you've got this fluffy thing over here that is, I just go and spend time with them and understand who they are and be curious.

And then how do we justify that to our, to our masters, um, over how to be a good use of our time.

Tina O'Dell: That is definitely going to be the biggest challenge. Um, especially post COVID, um, That, that time frame that I referenced was pre COVID when corporate travel was still a thing and you were encouraged to get out and spend face time, you know, with your partners and, um, Have that time, build those relationships.

And right now the reality is, you know, we are in a time where nobody is spending a lot of money on travel without really scrutinizing it. Most companies that I am aware of. Our customer facing travel only. That's the priority. Uh, some consider partners also as customers and allow for that travel. Um, many don't, you know, many don't see that time that face time with partners as valuable.

As time with customers, and I, again, respectfully disagree. Like if it's your largest customers that you're going after those top tier named accounts, yes, you want to prioritize, you know, that travel and spend that time, but for everybody else that falls under that, you're really reliant on your channel.

You have to step back and think about why do we sell through a channel model? We do that so that we can accelerate our reach. We do that so that we can reach more people. More customers, you know, throughout the globe to sell them, position our product, position our benefits. And the best way to make sure that that's a quality interaction is to spend time, you know, with our channel partners.

So I think it's really going to come down to our channel chiefs. Really needing to advocate for that budget and that time and that quality experience, uh, with their partner account managers or their channel account managers, um, and their marketing counterparts, you know, because that is a piece that often gets overlooked your, your partner account manager, your channel account manager.

They're usually very strong on the business side of things. Some of them understand all the marketing programs and can help that partner. Many of them cannot. And the reality is a lot of our channel partners do not have marketing educated individuals or lots of marketing resources in their organization.

They either have, you know, a couple of marketing resources. Maybe one of them is marketing educated and one. Just helps out with the events and and doing the planning, but they need that they need that bit of education that guidance that co planning and that is a priority. And I think the only way that we're really going to get there is through our channel chiefs advocating for that budget and making the case for it internally and what's going to help the channel chiefs is.

We have to show return on an investment in those partners. We have to demonstrate through good recordkeeping, good notes that when we spend face time with a partner, we're able to go deeper in the relationship. We're able to execute better on MDF investments that we make and show that ROI. So this is where it's going to become really important to do some record keeping and have some outcomes that that channel chief can take back internally and say, look at the growth we've driven.

By getting our people out and spending more time, getting more mindshare. We've convinced the channel that we're the product they should lead with. Um, and, and we're seeing that in our sales, we're getting more opportunities. We're getting more proof of concepts. We're getting more demos that's turning into more one deals.

Uh, our average number of transacting partners is higher. Our average price, uh, for an opportunity that's coming in from a partner has gone up, those are the things that we need to be looking for. Um, so while we're. Tapping our channel chiefs to make that case, we have to do our part to make sure that we're giving them the evidence, uh, to support that.

Jon Busby: No, completely agree. And I think it's, I mean, yeah, actually one of the points as you were going through that there, Tina, was, you know, you mentioned that corporate travel is now much harder than it ever has been. Um, Yet, you know, our partners have a, that that's the place our partners plays to get closer to our customers.

So it's even more important that we should be spending time with them to be able to increase our reach. So it's kind of a, a bit of a double edged sword there, if you will. Um,

Tina O'Dell: yeah, it seems logical, doesn't it? Yeah, it

Jon Busby: does. It does when you put it that way. So, um, but it, it's just one of these things that goes through my head is.

You know, I've learned as a technologist, right? I love to apply processes and systems and into an organization. I love seeing it when it's automated well. But really what I've learned is that only works if you have the right people that are on board and people you need to Get to know each other's motivations.

And what, you know, you spend the first 10 minutes of a meeting talking about what really matters to you and your kids, and the fact that, you know, one of your kids is off school and has a cough today, that kind of stuff builds relationships and, and warmth in a relationship. Um, and you know, we can't, we can't look to everything being automated all the time.

So that brings us really onto the question that we always love to ask at the moment, which is how is technology going to be changing all of this? Um, so let's change tact for a moment. Like Tina, how are you seeing AI come into channel marketing and influencing channel marketing?

Tina O'Dell: Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunities, uh, with AI coming into channel marketing.

Um, many companies, uh, even just in the last year have been spending time trying to figure out how can we make it easier for our channel community to utilize the marketing resources that we create. You know, so there's, there's a bit of a, uh, a divide, uh, in, uh, The resources that technology companies have to invest in marketing and the resources that channel partners have.

Now, it's not always the case. Some of our very largest channel partners have, you know, very large organizations. They have large, sophisticated marketing, uh, teams. But when we speak about channel, we're not typically talking about those largest of the partners. We're talking more of the mid to small channel partners who have, you know, three to 10 people in their marketing department.

They may only have one or two in their marketing department. So for, For that part of the channel, that real scaling factor of the channel that we can influence through making programs easy, making data more accessible, um, utilizing AI to do everything that we've been doing. But doing it faster, getting it in their hands, uh, more quickly and seamlessly, making it customizable and co brandable and in their voice, um, is all going to be the things that we need to be focused on.

And, and I've seen several instances of this where, um, Uh, companies are investing now in platforms where they can take their organic social and proactively push that out through partners that want to execute that same organic social, maybe with a little bit of their own spin, you know, and customizing the time that it hits their local market.

We've seen examples of where, uh, you know, we at Juniper have, uh, lots of campaign kits that can be co brandable and customizable. You can take pieces and parts, you can take the whole thing and execute it. Um, I think taking that a step further and making it easier to customize and execute. And go faster with that.

What that exactly looks like right now, we don't know. Uh, and it's almost a full time job just to stay on top of all of the AI platforms, you know, that are available and the tools that can be used and all the advances that traditional marketing companies that used to do, um, B2B appointment setting or B2B marketing, they're all retooling.

And embracing AI right now, and they're all coming back to the table with new spends on how, you know, they could help us support our channel partners and our job as a technology vendor is going to be evaluating those tools, understanding what might work, what's going to be, uh, Easy for our channel partners to adopt what's actually going to add value, uh, without causing them more work and then helping them understand how to stay on top of these things and utilize those resources.

And, and that's the other thing that we often forget. Um, Being the technology vendor, we are often on the leading edge of all of these advances in technology. We've been wrapping our head around AI, um, pretty solidly for the last year, some of us many more years, you know. Juniper, from a technology perspective, has been embracing AI for five or six or seven years now.

In the marketing space, we've really been leaning into it, um, very deeply in the last year. So it's on us right now to take all of those key learnings and share that with our partners, whether that's through things like our podcasts or talks or suggesting tools or incorporating that. so much, everyone.

Into the tools that we offer for our channel partners. So we have a bit of a responsibility to, you know, ingest that, digest it, and then simplify it and serve it back up to partners and give them some suggestions on tools that they can use, um, and how they can use it very simply and specifically how they can use it to do.

They're day to day, not ask them to do something wholly new and unnatural, but these are things you're trying to do anyway. Here's some ways you can use these tools to do them faster, maybe with less people, more accurately, you know, create more customizable communications, you know, just give them the real benefits of what they might be able to do.

Jon Busby: Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more really with that, which is so the third point we've got here is we need to educate or rather give our partners the right tools and direction when it comes to technology. Um, and that means the same advice that we give around AI in every case, really, which is be specific with the use case.

Don't just say like AI. And expect them to know what they're doing, like, give them some of the, the knowledge, the know how, the prompts, the, um, the platforms, if you will, um, to be able to get there. So I think that, that, that kind of gives us like our three, we've got kind of our three New Year's resolutions there, which is, what do we have at the beginning, Harry?

We had, um, check your ego at the door. Then we had, we've, we've had, be curious. And spend time and then we, but then we've had be responsible, I'm going to say around technology. Um, I like that. That's, we've got three strong New Year's resolutions there to start, start the year with. But Tina, this isn't the first time you've created a piece of content to educate partners, is it?

Um, and this is, you know, you're launching this out to the public soon. If I'm, if I'm getting my dates right here. So tell us, what have you created to help partners on that journey? Um, more than just the wonderful, um, insight you've given us over the last hour.

Tina O'Dell: Yeah, so, uh, I was at a conference a couple years ago, and actually, John, you and I were at the conference together, and what became very obvious by having, um, A group of technology people, mostly from the valley in California, uh, in a room talking about selling through channel.

What became super obvious was most people don't really have a playbook or a guidebook for how to market through the channel and to the channel or be a channel partner and market, you know, to your customers. And it's, it's true. It's something that's not taught in business schools. Nobody says, you know, here specifically, if people are selling through a channel, this is your role.

This is the vendor's role. This is who owns the customer. All of that is not defined. It's something that's created in the wild. And we were talking about, all of us, that that's, that's an area that We struggled with is, you know, you have all these different backgrounds and levels of knowledge out there in the channel about how to be successful in the channel, you know, from things like, how do you identify your ideal customer targets or your, the ideal customer profile to how do I build a marketing plan?

How do I, uh, request and build, uh, and ask for funding, you know, for things. So. Following that, I took on a passion project and spent some time, uh, internally with some, uh, writers and just started, uh, coming up with answers, you know, to many of those questions from how do I set targets? How do I identify ideal customer profiles?

How do I determine which prospects we should be going after in our target geography? How to align, um, Our business goals with vendor business goals, uh, executing, um, multi touch campaigns and, and really creating some variety in that mix to, to keep it more interesting and to take, um, leads or prospects from one campaign into the next campaign, into the next campaign so that you're actually nurturing them.

And we put those all together in a marketing, uh, guidebook, channel marketing guidebook that we've created that I'm going to be sharing this week. Uh, so that any marketer, um, in the industry can have access to this. There are some Juniper specific things and resources in it. So if you're not a Juniper partner, there's going to be a few things you won't have access to.

But by and large, a lot of the information contained. Uh, in this book is valuable to anybody that is marketing in the channel today. And, and it's broken up by chapters. There's, it's very digestible with some illustrations. Um, would love for people to take a look at this, uh, get back to me with some feedback, you know, would love to iterate on this and, and make it better.

Um, but just trying to put something out there for, Anyone that might be new to the role or has been in the role for several years, but very curious about one specific aspect. Um, take a look at the book, see if there's a chapter, uh, that covers that. And, uh, if not, I'm always open to people reaching out via LinkedIn to have a conversation, um, about a specific topic and would welcome that as well.

But I just think it was a gap in the industry. We really wanted to make it, uh, like a one day workshop or a half day workshop, but with. All the challenges for people to travel, uh, just didn't seem feasible. So the next best thing seemed to be, let's make it self serve, uh, so that people can just download it.

Um, read the parts that are meaningful to them, have a, maybe a more educated conversation, you know, with their partner account manager or their channel account manager or their marketing contact. Um, you know, it just might help open up some discussions and, and make them more fruitful and rewarding.

Jon Busby: No, completely.

In fact, you know what I'd forgotten? One of the things that came out of that event, Tina, was we were trying to create like an event for channel partners to come to, to learn all that, isn't it? It was, it's so difficult. It was so challenging, I think, to, to justify bringing them all together. But I still think there's a perfect market, market need out there.

You know, you see events like Catalyst, um, Which is, you know, based in Chicago, we've got a cross beams event, which I've forgotten the name off. But I remember shortly, you see, I'll start to see some of these start to crop up, but I think there is a real need to continue to educate and most importantly, inspire partners.

Um, about what the possibility is, like if you could take two pieces of advice. So we have, we'll have five coming out of this podcast. What are the two pieces that stand out from that book?

Harry Radcliffe: I'm not going to do the song. What's the, what's the son? Tina and I, you don't know this John. So this is a coincidence, but the end of a channel chats, we have the segment called Tina's top two, which I have a, which I have a jingle too.

Tina O'Dell: And I thought I was going to be off the hook this time on this one, so I didn't come into it with two things prepped to talk about, which, um, which is fine. Um, I think the two things that I think really matter the most, um, really come back to, we need technology companies, the vendors that have the products, the software, the services that they want to be sold.

They have to realize that the partner is really important. A key to their success and they really need to act that way. So going back to check the ego at the door, be curious, you know, go slow to go fast. Those things all, uh, correspond, you know, we need to find a way to spend that face time. We need to spend that time really understanding each other and mutual needs and finding mutual success.

I think that's the first key. And then the second key is as a channel partner. You need to understand that everything in the corporate world is driven off of metrics and outcomes and really understand the metrics and outcomes that your technology vendor is bound to and do what you can do to organize your data, to organize your campaigns, to give the feedback that you can give that help them understand that You know what?

The outcomes of things are and that outcome doesn't always have to be positive. Every campaign, every initiative is not successful. It's equally as important and meaningful to understand things that have failed so that we can take that information back in and course correct. and make something that will work or to stop doing something and stop putting money into something that is not getting us the return that we want.

So just because we say we need outcomes and we need feedback, it doesn't need to be made up numbers to make something, an initiative look good. It needs to be good, honest outcomes. And as long as a partner has put in the effort to make something successful, and then it doesn't succeed. No vendor that I'm aware of is, is going to, um, look poorly on that partner if they have put the best foot forward and given honest feedback, that is very valuable to have because it helps us to stop throwing good money after bad and, and make the changes that we need to make.

So those would be my two things, one for each side. I love

Jon Busby: those. I'm almost imagining like a, a KPI house, you know, where you've got kind of the ROI at the top, but actually if a partner turns up and says, Actually, I, you know, I can't drive ROI on this because, you know, we're, we're new instead, we're going to use these three metrics and this is what we're going to, you're never going to turn that down, really, if someone's put that thought into it.

So

Tina O'Dell: it's a discussion. You've got to continue that discussion. Like if I say, this is what I need, I need ROI. And the partner says, I can't give you a straight up ROI, but what I can tell you is I can promise you that you will always know how many people we've invited to an event, how many people RSVP, who actually showed up and then how many people we were successful following up with and trying to set appointments with.

I can give you those things. Does that help? And then you can go back and forth and you can determine and, and maybe even offer suggestions on ways we can. Uh, track things better or, uh, alternative, you know, KPIs that we can look at that will be meaningful. It's just because something seems hard or unattainable, keep having the discussion to find some common ground where we can meet.

Jon Busby: Um, and will we, this has been like our own little channel chat, uh, except it's been on the tech marketing podcast. And we haven't had the same jingles that Harry's talking about. I've been teasing.

Harry Radcliffe: Tina's top two.

Tina O'Dell: Yeah, see? He's got it down. People look forward to that. He does it slightly different on most episodes.

I like to vary it. It's always a little different. Sometimes a bit flat. So people have commented on that.

Harry Radcliffe: Exactly that. So yeah, do, do, uh, do come check us out over in channel chat. That is a, that's an even better podcast to be honest. So if you, if you like this, you'll love that.

Tina O'Dell: I appreciate you guys having me on.

And if there is somebody out there that's doing a channel marketers workshop, um, or an event, you know, and, and there's an opportunity, there's some way I could add value, you know, please reach out because I do think if we could get to the point where we're having this event and it's not, Vendor A having their event, vendor B having theirs, vendor C having theirs.

But we just had one channel marketers event where we all bring best practices and ways that our channel partners can be more productive and get more out of their marketing, all the vendors are going to win in that scenario, all the technology vendors would win.

Jon Busby: I, I even, I actually even went to the stage of like, I think I costed this out with different venues.

I figured out sponsorship packages and I realized that I'm just, I'm not an event marketeer at that point. Um, and that I need to go back to my day job. But like, I think there's a real, I would love to run some of that. So if, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to take that call to action as well. Like get in touch with me, with, with us and Tina and let's make that happen.

Um, but, uh, yeah, I think that is a real need. Well, thanks so much guys.