By Diane Krakora, CEO
Dramatic. Yes, I’m going with ‘dramatic.’ There are a host of other words to describe the mergers and divestments, technology and culture, protests and politics of 2016. (I’ll save those for a cocktail party.) But no matter what side of the divide you stood on in any debate, 2016 was not a quiet year. But I keep telling myself change is good. Change brings new ideas, new challenges, renewed participation and unanticipated advancements.
In the PartnerPath world, we’ve seen how change has helped the IT channel evolve, maturing to a point where it won’t be long before partners hold the majority, if not all, the cards when it comes to their vendor relationships. Channel programs, too, are experiencing change to become more meaningful and valuable to partners. And let’s not forget some pretty awesome technology for partners to offer their customers.
These changes were the heart of the conversation I had last week during our end-of-year webinar, “Looking Back, Looking Forward,” during which I caught up with guests Darren Bibby, VP of Channel Strategy and Programs at DocuSign and former VP of Channels and Alliances Research at IDC, and Charlene O’Hanlon, independent writer and consultant and former channel editor. Our conversation spanned three major topics – Cloud, Enablement and Marketing – each spawning discussions that could have been their own webinars.
The State of Cloud
I’ve asked Darren and Charlene the question, “Will we ever stop talking about the cloud?” for the three years we’ve been doing this webinar, and this year the answer was different: Yes (finally).
“At some point – and soon, I think – the cloud will become ubiquitous, like any other technology,” Charlene said. “Think about the telephone: At one point everybody was talking about this great new contraption called the telephone. Then eventually everyone had one and the conversation stopped. The same will happen with cloud.”
Darren agreed, but noted the transition to the cloud, for both channel partners and vendors, is still a slow process. “The transition is absolutely still a thing, and there’s a lot of transitions now. I don’t think I’ve met a partner who’s made all the transitions they need to.”
Those transitions, he said, are necessary for partners to become “partners of the future” and include not only adopting the cloud, but also moving to a recurring revenue model and successfully marketing and selling to line-of-business and C-suite customers rather than the IT department.
Darren’s answer then led to the question, “Whose responsibility is it to ensure partners can become those partners of the future?”
His answer: “First and foremost, it’s the responsibility of the partners. It’s their responsibility that they need to change, and they have to own that change.” That said, vendors should help their partners make that change. “Some of the best vendors are realizing that change is hard, and they’ve got to push their partners along. There are not enough net-new interesting partners out there … so [vendors] have to bring their biggest partners along.”
The bottom line: Cloud is enabling change, and change means channel partners’ roles are no longer hardware sales and installation. It’s more about being a solution provider in the truest sense of the word – and that means the relationships vendors forge and maintain with their partners today will pay in dividends when those partners shift to positioning themselves as problem-solvers – rather than as a Cisco partner, or HP partner, or what have you.
Everyone’s Favorite: Enablement
What, then, does this mean for enablement? Does technical training and certification still matter? Our esteemed panel said, “Yes. And no.”
“Training is important,” Charlene said. “I don’t think certification is as important, especially as you consider the changing role of the solution provider. … The majority of solution providers, what they need most from vendors is training around those things that aren’t so technically-oriented,” such as digital marketing and social selling.
IT departments, Darren said, traditionally looked for accreditations and certifications in their buying process, but the buyers of today, the line-of-business and C-level executives, care more about the outcome. “They don’t really care what’s behind the scenes; they just want to know the outcome,” he said.
What to do about marketing?
The final topic of our conversation focused on the changing buyer’s journey and how that is impacting the channel. It’s well-known (or well-repeated) that more than half of customers already know what they want to buy before ever contacting a salesperson. This means the traditional way of selling goes right out the window for many partners. The sales-led motion must now be a marketing-led motion because that’s how customers want to engage and that’s how they’re buying.
MDF, then, must change to reflect this new way of selling. Vendors must enable partners to use their MDF to increase their marketing-led sales efforts to include implementation of digital marketing strategies and even – gasp! – the hiring of a digital marketing manager to help partners succeed. Gone are the days of in-person mixers and other such events (although such events still can be useful in certain cases), replaced by Facebook Live events, video tutorials and other digital activities.
See for yourself
These were only some of the insights Darren and Charlene brought to the webinar, so I encourage you to watch the whole video for more on our take of the future direction of the channel. Plus, we have a few laughs.
Hopefully 2017 will bring great things to IT and the channel, and may we all experience good fortune and a little less drama in the coming year.
Diane Krakora is CEO of PartnerPath with two decades of experience defining the best practices and frameworks around how to develop and manage partnerships.
