Blog

At a recent vendor conference, I presented on the significant roles vendors and their partners play in customer success. To highlight the urgency with which vendors should help their partners, I cited data from our 2019 State of Partnering study: 67% of solution providers haven’t yet invested in the people, methodologies and technologies to be effective at customer success. After what I thought was a fabulous presentation with moments of greatness, an attendee came up and asked me, “so how do I do this and help my partners invest in customer satisfaction?” Epic fail. After making sure it wasn’t a slip of the tongue, I realized the difference between customer satisfaction and customer success may not always be clear. So here goes.

Five from Cisco Live!

This week, CEO Diane Krakora is in San Diego, CA for the Cisco Live! annual customer and partner conference. After a full day of keynotes, sessions and meetings, she has five main takeaways from Day 1. Watch her short video ruminating on these five main points.

1. Cisco is a partner-centric organization (reporting that 90% of their business comes through partners)
2. the importance of new buying centers (line of business buyers)
3. the focus on customer success
4. what is a partner’s DNA?
5. why perform to transform

The Best Use for Best Practices

This week, CEO Diane Krakora was in Carlsbad, CA (near San Diego) for the Channel Focus North America Conference. On Day 3, she attended more sessions in an extremely busy and content-filled last day. During many sessions, channel executives shared details on their partner programs, structures, business models, and best practices. Diane noticed attendees frantically taking notes and has this caution, "put everything into context." Hear why she thinks you shouldn't implement what others are doing without taking a closer look at your own partner maturity.

Keynote: New Channels New Challenges

This week, CEO Diane Krakora is in Carlsbad, CA (near San Diego) for the Channel Focus North America Conference. On Day 2, she attended 10 hours of sessions which included 1 keynote, 3 tracks and 12 workshops. (Alas, she can't be in multiple sessions at once!) Watch this 4-minute video to hear her comments on some of the interesting points made in the keynote by Gavriella Schuster titled, "New Channels New Challenges - How should a smart vendor respond?"

Women's Leadership Council

This week, CEO Diane Krakora traveled to Carlsbad, CA (near San Diego) for the Channel Focus North America Conference. On Day 1, she attended the Women's Leadership Council. Watch this 5-minute video as she runs down the three primary topics covered throughout the day:

1. What's it like to be a woman in technology?
2. How do you get a "seat at the table"?
3. How do you create a personal brand?

A Focus on Next Generation Partners

This week, CEO Diane Krakora is at Sapphire Now in Orlando, Florida. She kicked off the week with Monday's sessions at the SAP Global Partner Summit. What is their "next generation" partnering about? Diane runs down some of the key elements presented by SAP including partner IP, partner economics and partner experience. SAP packed a TON of information all into one day focused entirely on partners and Diane packed it into 7 minutes. Take a look.

Your biggest influencers are your partners. Do you track them?

By Diane Krakora, CEO

I realize it’s silly to declare a sales process overrated or worse, irrelevant. But the acquisition of the purchase order (which ignites the operational processes to ship product and book a sale) is meaningless. In days when revenues are paramount, the act of transacting business with customers seems to be the most relevant action within the sales cycle. However, I assert the sale actually happened long before the quote was created or the contract signed.