Ep#114 Partnerships Are Critical To The Enablement Process

Host: Jon

Well, our next guest is Jesse Shipman, c e o and founder of Flu, a sales enablement platform for ecosystem selling. She was born in Hawaii but raised in Colorado where she still resides with her husband and two children. Jesse spent seven and a half years at Apple where she found her life's best work and partnership enablement. And speaking of partnership enablement, that's our topic today, partnership enablement and sales. Please join me in welcoming Jesse to the show. Jesse, thanks for joining.

Guest: Jessie

Thanks for letting me be here, Jon, this is super fun.

Host: Jon

So, Jesse, before we jump into our topics of partnerships because partnerships are very key, we're also talking about sales and I think they kind of go hand in hand and enablement. How about you give everybody a little bit more in-depth backstory on yourself?

Guest: Jessie

Yeah, for sure. Well, it's super nice to be here with all the people who listen to you, so thanks for putting me in your ear and letting me hang out for a hot minute. I, let's see. I mean, born in Hawaii, and raised in Colorado, and there were all kinds of shenanigans between that and the first part of my career. But I started straight out of college as a certified athletic trainer. This is going to be a weird story. I started as a certified athletic trainer and a high school teacher. So I taught at an amazing girl school here in Aurora, Colorado, and I loved every minute of it. I thought for sure that I'd spend the rest of my life as a teacher, and my husband and I decided three years into that career to move to Texas, and this was 2010.

Guest: Jessie

We were young and dumb and we were like, surely this will be a great idea. And it was like the tail end of the 2008 crisis. We ended up short sailing our house, and moving to Texas, we sold everything we had, and I was like, I'll get a classroom job, no problem. I've got three years of experience. And it wasn't that I wasn't hireable so that there were no jobs, there were no teaching jobs. And so I was like, well, what do I do now? So I started working at Starbucks as a barista. That was humbling, and it was finishing my master's in information and learning technologies, and I started volunteering at the local school district. I was like, how does one get in? One volunteer? So I cut out math shapes and I laminated things, and that built some relationships around the folks in the central office.

Guest: Jessie

I fixed a Mac for someone and then she was like, this person should be working on it. And so I got an IT role as a campus technician. I went around classrooms, blew out projectors, and helped teachers with their passwords. And from there I taught myself mobile device management at Apple. So there was a Bank of Max or a classroom full of Macs that needed to be imaged. We tried it, but they broke, I fixed it or I helped fix it. I contacted the vendor and worked with them for a week and figured out how to do it. And then I was the one person who actually knew how to do that in the district and then got the role as their systems administrator. So I ended up rolling out and switching out every PC for a Mac in the district. It was like 5,000 Macs over six months at 26 campuses.

Guest: Jessie

And from there created amazing relationships inside Apple. So I made a short stint at that M D M company after my IT role as a professional services engineer doing implementation and teaching folks how to use the software in their environment, which was super fun. And then I got called to be in a role at Apple as a systems engineer. So I started as a sales engineer for three years. I worked with amazing people in the North Texas area helping them to understand and deploy Apple devices in their schools. And then moved into after about three years, moved into the enterprise space to start working with partnerships. So I didn't know that partnerships were a career. I didn't know that enablement was a career. But I got into this role, started working with strategic partnerships at Apple, and realized that this was my bread and butter. This was the thing that I was passionate about, was not only what I believed in at Apple, but also being able to strategically think about how others can learn about partner products, how they articulate them, and how they bring added value to customers in solving customer problems.

Host: Jon

So our topic today is partnerships, enablement, and sales and what you're passionate about. Before I get to that, I heard you're a fellow podcaster. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because it's always nice to go back and forth and have somebody on the show that is passionate about doing it themselves and knows exactly what we go through day in and day out.

Guest: Jessie

Yeah, for sure. So I started podcasting at Apple. So part of our enablement efforts inside of the sales engineering organization was to create this internal podcast because we were a disparate group of people. We were remote, we were remote before remote was a thing, and getting together was a once-a-year thing. We'd get together and do this massive sprint, but we weren't able to have those incremental conversations except for one-on-one. And so we created this cool podcast called Field Pods, and I helped to host it and we created over a hundred episodes and then I took that I loved, I love podcasting, I love this form factor. And then I recently started a new podcast that's available everywhere you get your podcasts called Selling Together through a media Network called Partner Hacker. And the concept of that podcast is bridging the gap between partnerships and sales by telling the stories of how sellers understand partnerships, how they make them successful in their organizations, and the good, bad, uglier otherwise around partnerships and sales.

Host: Jon

All right, let's dive into partnerships because I don't think many companies can do things on their own without a successfully implemented partnership or partners throughout the ecosystem. Let's talk about partnerships and why it's valuable

Guest: Jessie

For sure. So I think that inherently companies think about this anyway, but very few are good at it. I think that when people initially think of, or when especially sea levels start thinking about partnerships, they immediately go to the channel. So how many channels can I get my product into so other people will sell it for me? This exponential sales growth. And what they don't think about is that nobody cares about your product as much as you do. Nobody's going to be as passionate about your product as you are. And so immediately jumping into a reseller or a channel organization and trying to get your information in front of their sellers usually goes pretty badly because there has to be an incentive. There has to be a partner incentive. And the reality of partnerships is that if you want to be top of mind, then you have to be given first. Somebody has to make the move. And IT partnerships, I think sometimes get that channel mentality and sort of this exponential revenue growth before they think about really the root word of partnerships is a partner. And when you think about a partner, the first thing you should think about is relationships. When, when I went into partnerships, I immediately was like, well, I don't have any context necessarily for business partnerships, but I've been a wife for a long time that that's my relationship or that's my understanding.

Host: Jon

It's a give-and-take, right?

Guest: Jessie

Yeah. That my understanding of partnerships is listening, curiosity, and what does the other person need from me? Am I doing that because I love them or because I'm expecting something in return? What's the difference between giving and manipulation and understanding? I put the business partnerships in the context of marriage and found that when I applied those principles of just a solid relationship I was getting a lot in return. And so those are kind of the things that when you're thinking about creating a partner program, that's what you should be thinking of first, am I willing to enter into a contractual marriage relationship with this other company because we have added value together to solve our customer's problems? And then what am I going to do to make sure that this relationship thrives?

Host: Jon

You indicated that nobody else will be more passionate about your product than you. And the very first thing that people think about is, oh, I got to go to the channel and get this out there. Think. And being in that space, I experienced it firsthand, not only with the channel, with ISVs, VAs distributors, everything along those lines of actually working directly on me. Okay, I want them to sell this product. We want them to get it out there. But unless they see the value of your product, they understand it, and they fully know that it's going to help. But also the incentive part, and I think the difficult part that comes into play is that you go to them and yeah, we want you to sell our product. Great. What's in it for me? And it doesn't seem like a fair partnership. It's like, listen, here's the problem we have. Here's our solution. Let's work together. Do you have customers? Let's see how we can collaborate to make this successful.

Guest: Jessie

Yeah, I mean, I would ask you having direct experience with that, what did you find that channel partners wanted from you? What did you find was successful? Even if it was just a little bit,

Host: Jon

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Guest: Jessie

Yeah, I mean, I would ask having direct experience with that, what did you find that channel partners wanted from you? What did you find was successful? Even if it was just a little bit,

Host: Jon

I think as long as you presented them with a solution to a problem that was not complex and easy to understand for their sales team to understand, that was very key. But also to understand that it was a very give-and-take type relationship where you were not going to them, you sell and we'll get the money, we'll put it back. It was more or less, let's work together and incentivize them because they have to do work for you. So every type of engagement you have the support behind the scenes for it. I think one of the biggest things, and I'll keep names a little undisclosed, but I worked for a company that would go to a big public cloud provider and says, Hey, listen, we want you to send us leads. And the public cloud provider said, well, we need to see that you're all into us or very service one not. We're not just going to send you stuff. It's a give-and-take. You show the value that you want to invest in us the same that we will show the value that we're invested in you. And it's a back-and-forth type of collaboration and relationship.

Guest: Jessie

I think a ton of, in so many cases, ISVs, smaller ISVs, or point solutions get a little googly-eyed when they see all of the customers the reach of hyper scalers, and they get so intoxicated by the prospect of being in front of all of those customers because they understand inherently that warm leads are better than cold leads. That relationship-driven sale is better than no relationship-driven sales. And so they're like, okay if all of these sellers at these cloud providers or hyper-scalers have relationships with these customers, they're trusted advisors. If our product is on their lips, we are going to likely sell more. That is the case. However, what people do is end there. They just say, there are customers. I want them to go and go forth and talk about me. And the reality is people should be, or organizations need to be thinking about what the added value to the customer is.

Guest: Jessie

What is it that we do better together than we don't do better apart? And can I easily articulate that for a co-sell opportunity? Because the other thing too that people or organizations try to do is essentially get other people to tell their stories for them. And in some cases, that's necessary, not even a value-added reseller. Because those are usually smaller. But some of the bigger corporate resellers, have thousands of products, thousands, and some customers, I was just talking to somebody the other day about this, but some customers either have to or want to buy their whole solution from a reseller. It's just simpler for them from a procurement standpoint. And so it's important to have your product in those resellers. But the reality is if it's just a standalone product, it's not bundled with other products. It's not easy to talk about. It's buried in some kind of vertical. They're never going to necessarily talk about it unless the customer's coming directly to them. But for channel

Host: Jon

The better. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut it out. No, no,

Guest: Jessie

No, you go.

Host: Jon

Oh no, I actually would just say you, the better together story was key in the relationships that you talked about and have. I think the value of having others talk about you, they're out there advocating for you is key to trust.

Guest: Jessie

Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, trust is the foundation of this matrix, and trust is only built through relationships. Bene Brown talks, do you know who Bene Brown is? Yep. Yeah, of course. One of my favorite authors, podcasters, researchers, and people on the planet, talks about trust in terms of a marble jar. So she talks about her daughter's teacher has a jar, and every time the class does something awesome, she puts a marble in the jar, and then when they get to a certain level, they get a prize. And she relates that to trust. Every interaction that you have with somebody that says, I am who I say am, my yeses are yeses, my no or nos. I'm going to follow through with the things that I say. I'm not going to overpromise and underdeliver dropping marbles in the jar, and you're becoming trustworthy over time and having a better together story that's like well thought out, that solves a customer problem, solves a larger customer problem, is adding 10 marbles at a time. And then you say what you say you're going to do and you provide them leads and you help them close their quota and you potentially have some referral incentive and you're contributing to the payment of their mortgage, not just to Starbucks. You start to build up trust over time. But the reality is, is that all it takes is one person to come in and swipe the marvel jar and you have to start all over again. And so trust, trust is built in drips, but it's lost in spills. And so

Host: Jon

To, that's a phrase right there. That is key. Anybody that is Lizzie. So everybody, real quick, we're talking with Jesse Shipman around partnerships, enablement, and sales, and we just touched on trust and I just want to capture that. I'm going to post that socially as a quote, if you don't mind, do it as a quote because it it's so easy, it takes years to build and can be wiped out in seconds.

Guest: Jessie

Yes, absolutely. Right. And relation, the relationship piece of this is so key. So it's organizationally for partnerships to have a better together story that is oriented on a solution, but then it's up to each seller to build a partner pipeline. So as much time as they're spending building relationships with customers, building customer pipeline, finding in the market, they also have to be reaching out to their partners and building relationships with those sellers one drip at a time and building a partner pipeline because then it's so easy to be top of mind. But if you're not investing any time, you're never going to see exponential growth. And so organizations often don't necessarily do this where they're enabling sellers to mingle with sellers at their partners. It's usually only partner people talking to partner people. And we kind of have to bridge that gap. We have to provide opportunities for sellers to be able to engage with other sellers and become part of their networks

Host: Jon

As it takes so many touches for a salesperson to close a deal for a sale, what is it like 16 around there? And then that's emails, communication, and trust. But the relationship building that you build with your partners is the same relationship that you're building with your customers is a long-term thing. And you have to go in an approach that you want to help solve a problem, you have the solution, you are a problem, you have the relationship or they have the solution for your customers, whatever it is, you have to look through it through the long term. And its relationship buildings are very key to building that partnership relationship, correct?

Guest: Jessie

I mean it's everything. And the reality is that I think we do this a lot in a business where we think we know the answer, we think we know what the solution is, and then we just start building things for that solution. But we've never actually interacted with the person we're trying to solve it for. This happens all the time in startups all the time where somebody's like, I have this problem, I'm going to solve it. And they pour a hundred thousand dollars into building some SaaS product and then they put it in front of whom they think their ideal customer is and their ideal customers. I don't need to solve this problem.

Host: Jon

They build something for themselves and fix their problem, but it's not a customer problem. They were the only ones that had it and they think everybody else has it.

Guest: Jessie

You just waste time and money, right? And so the same thing with partnerships is you're going to waste so much time, energy, resources, and money building something, building a partner better together, building an incentive program without ever understanding what your partner needs from you. And I think this happens maybe less in I S V partnerships because there's something that has to be built jointly. When you're doing an integration kind of situation. There's something that has to be built jointly. And so there's already kind of an inherent better together. Where that usually falls is that they build the integration and then it goes into their partner directory or marketplace, and then nobody ever hears about it again. So it kind of falls right there. But for the channel, nobody's asking the channel what the hell they need. They just assume that they're going to fill their pipeline with products and that everybody's going to be excited about them. I find this a lot that agencies don't ever hear from ISVs what they need from them. And then when they say what they need from them, they feel like they can't execute O on it because the L T V is too low or whatever it might be. Because the reality is I think that the agencies and channel partners, what they want to your point, a bundled and easy solution to a problem that there is or I C d, is, what is the word ideal? Because yeah, I C p, too many acronyms, Jon.

Host: Jon

Don't worry. That's why I'm taking notes as we go along so I can remember

Guest: Jessie

It. Whomever their ideal customer is, is this product or this bundle of products adding value to me as their trusted advisor? And then once I'm able to sell that and potentially are there implementation services around it, because if you're just a point solution, and even if you add value to my customer if I'm not earning any dollars on that, why should I suggest it? I need to actually, so is there implementation, and can I be certified in it? How are you going to enable and train me? How are you going to build a relationship with me and is there a referral? Are there referral commissions? Can I earn 20% lifetime commissions on this customer? That's the huge incentive for me to go out and talk about your product. So build, it's, if you want the channel to be your exponential growth mechanism, you have to build that 20% commission into your lifetime value. You just have to make it worth their while.

Host: Jon

I agree with you, and I agree with you, not only the commission, the value of actually doing it. What's the incentive? There's nothing wrong with everybody that's listening, there's nothing wrong with incentivizing them to sell the value of your product because what they get offered and suggested so many different products and services, one, they're going to look at the value of it. Is it solving a customer problem one of their customers needs to do? Oh my God, there you go. You have that while I got five of those, which one's easy to implement and what's the incentive behind it? There's nothing wrong with providing the incentive to do it. Why else would we do this, right? Why else would we do it besides first its customer, customer first? Why? Because if you're not solving their problem, you're losing their trust. If you're just doing it for the money, you lost their trust. Am I wrong, Jesse?

Guest: Jessie

Absolutely. A hundred percent right. And trust is everything.

Host: Jon

Yes, we talked about it. Trust is very key in the end, the last, say the fifth thing. Okay, what is the incentive for me to do that? I think that provides a lot of value. You touched on certification. So how are we enabling these to be a partner or enable them to go out and sell my product or talk about my product? I mean, is there, there's not one key way to do it, but is there a way that we can do this efficiently?

Guest: Jessie

Yeah. So enablement, I think frequently has the definition of training. When people think about enablement, they think about, oh, we're training people, but the reality is everything we just talked about is enablement. So is it the right solution? Can they service it or integrate it? Do they get an incentive of financial incentive for selling it? Those three things together are enablement, right? Those pieces are enabling them to go and talk about you then. Am I supporting them through training and content and communication? Am I having frequent listening sessions to make sure that this is all going well? And then do they have the proper tools and processes in place to hear about me when it matters to their customers? And that's kind of the problem that fluency is solving because this is, if you ask, there are lots of polls that have been done out there.

Guest: Jessie

My buddy Will Taylor over at Partner Hacker did a poll probably six months ago. He talked to 50 different partner leaders and partner enablement was among the top three problems in front of and top of his mind. So it's lead. I have an equation that I use all the time learning equals motivation plus information. And so what we frequently do is just flooded with information, but we give zero motivation to learn about what we're doing. We toss a one-pager in a partner portal, or we send it in an email. We have a webinar, and we do a lunch and learn. We give everybody some Uber Eats credits and they order their lunch, and then they sit and listen to our webinar and there might be an uptick, but the reality is they're not going to entirely learn about my product until they're motivated to do that.

Guest: Jessie

Well, what is the one thing that motivates a seller? It's a customer. Can I sell faster? Well, the industry data tells us that if you include a partner early in the buying cycle with an in-market customer, you're likely to sell way more, way faster, and have way higher retention. And so it's a matter of getting them the information that they need about you and the time that it matters to the customer that they're trying to sell into. And so that's a huge problem, being able to train people to listen to keywords. Well, when you have 150 partners, how do you know the keywords for each partner? It's just not something that can stick in a human brain. At max. You're probably going to be able to do that well with three, especially if you've created a partner pipeline around those three or five.

Guest: Jessie

And so that's the problem that we're trying to solve with fluency. Is this just in time identifying the right partner for the right customer and putting it in front of the seller, and then actually giving that seller something to do? Do I go and learn from the partner portal? Do I make sure I add something in Salesforce that kicks off my partner team to help me with this sale? Do I connect with the AE at this partner? Whatever that workflow is that you've defined in your partner or organization, we want to make sure that sellers are enabled to go and do it without having all of the friction of trying to figure that out themselves. For the 150 or a thousand partners that you might have,

Host: Jon

If they get 150 or even a thousand partners, you're only going to remember, and you said three, I'm going to give it to about 10. And the only reason is that there are about 10 of those that are constantly emailing you, reaching out to you every day. How are things going and communicating with you about existing customers you're working on or have within the environment? Those are the ones that you've built trust with, you've built a relationship with. Those are the ones that you can reach out to and be like, Hey, I got this problem. One of the key things that I want to touch on is what is the value of having their solution. So I, let's say, here's my partner and they have a solution for it, and I want to bring them into it. What is the value of having their product whitelisted or not, or white labeled or not for customers? Do you find that customers see like, oh, wait, now I got to deal with another sub partner in it, or I just want a seamless transaction between them and I don't want to know that others exist?

Guest: Jessie

Well, usually if you're bringing in a partner to solve a problem that you don't solve yourself. So yeah, if you have a solution and the part, the customer's like, I like this, but I need to do X, and you're listening for those keywords from your 10 because they're in constant contact, they're giving you deals, you've solved the common problem together before, and so then you're bringing in the partner to be like, oh, okay, we don't do that, but we do integrate. Or we have a solutions partner that helps us with that. And you bring in the partner, and now you're solving the customer problem without the customer having to go do additional research on how to solve that piece of the problem. And you've brought value to the customer, you value to the partner, and you've brought value to yourself.

Host: Jon

I think it brings twofold. One, I worked for MSPs and what would happen is we would have channel reseller services and it would be all white labeled so that they could go in and seem like it was their interface and manage everything, and they didn't know that there was another partner behind it. I think that's okay and acceptable. But I also think you build, and I keep touching on trust here, you build trust by telling the customer, listen, we can't do it ourselves. We're going to bring an evaluated partner who's going to help us with this solution, and it's going to solve your problem. Now, you brought them in the first step in the first call, and you have that, okay, yes, we can do that. We're listening to you. We have problems X, Y, and Z. Yeah, we can take care of you on all of those fronts and handle it right away.

Guest: Jessie

Yeah, I think that there's value in certain cases to OEM or white labeling, particularly in enterprise and enterprise sales, especially if you're a point solution that solves a problem for a larger company that they go through all the security reviews and all that kind of stuff. It's just easier to white label or OEM in that case. But in terms of, I don't know if it's necessarily necessary to admit that you can't do something, but rather just be how we do it here is to partner. We believe in our partnership ecosystem, and these are the partners that do this exceptionally well, and we're happy to introduce them to you. So instead of it being, I can't, and it really should be, this is an active choice.

Host: Jon

This is one of the partners that we do to handle this specific request, and we'd like to bring them into the engagement early on so that we can tackle it upfront.

Guest: Jessie

Yeah, I mean, we don't want the customer to have to chase your tail trying to find out who can do this for you. We trust these organizations. They work with us all the time. We have customer success stories together, and now we want to introduce them to you.

Host: Jon

I think it's really good to provide this information early on to the customers. How am I supposed to do this? As part of our topic today we're talking about partnership enablement and sales. Where do sales come into play in all the incentive that is happening? Is this the selling of my product that's happening? Am I training my sales team for them to sell another product? And they're like, oh my God, 150 of these, I have to remember, give me my white paper and I'll go back and study it.

Guest: Jessie

So the point is, they don't. They're like, give me my white paper so I can get out of this meeting and carry on. Give

Host: Jon

Me my first call deck. And they'll like, they never, yeah, yeah. I'll read this on the call.

Guest: Jessie

Yeah, exactly. And they don't even, they don't even read it on the call because the reality is, is that B2B sales are hard. It's such a hard job. And the way that we, and I hope that this changes soon, but the way that we structure the incentives for sellers is to sell your thing. Sell it well to your persona, close your numbers, close your monthly numbers, close your quarterly numbers, close your half and your numbers. And if you don't do that, then you don't get your paycheck. And oh, by the way, the paycheck that you do get that's steady is a third of what you're worth. And so you have to close your numbers. But the reality is, is that 76% of sales professionals in B2B last year didn't close their quota, didn't close their numbers and didn't hit their quota. Fundamentally, there's something wrong there.

Guest: Jessie

Fundamentally, as an industry, we probably should be re-looking at some of these things. And Mackenzie has a great study about what could be done, what's different, what the new generation of sellers will look like, what the kinds of things are that they're expecting from their organizations that are different from the typical monthly or quarterly quota. And so the reality though is that partnerships have to be incentivized internally as well. So if I provide a lead to one of my partners and it closes, do I get quota relief on that? If I send a lead, a qualified lead to one of my partners, an ISV partner, and we as an organization get a commission on that, does that fall into my paycheck? Those are some of the things that have to be thought about for sellers because the incentive works both ways. There has to be an internal incentive as well. And part of that internal incentive is how do I as a B2B seller, customers are coming to you? Well, well-read like you're likely not talking to a customer until they've pretty much decided to buy from you. And the

Host: Jon

That's very true, only the only reason. They're only going through the sessions, the progression just because they have to,

Guest: Jessie

And you're leading them through it because that's the process. But as a value add, as a seller, you want to be a trusted advisor. You want to be a value add, you want to add information that they didn't have before other than what is the damn price because it's not listed on your website. And please don't send me a quote that has all kinds of codes that I don't know what the hell it is.

Host: Jon

It's an add-on

Guest: Jessie

All, yeah, all kinds. Oh, and by the way, there's a hundred thousand dollars implementation fee or whatever it might be.

Host: Jon

There's a one-time fee for this, and a two time for that, we spread it out over three or four payments.

Guest: Jessie

Yeah. Okay. So you've experienced this. Oh, but the bottom line is if I'm a B2B buyer, I'm only interacting with a seller because I couldn't pay with a credit card. Their process didn't let me pay with a credit card. So, what partners offer is, and what ecosystems offer is the ability for sellers to bring added value that cannot be researched. So in some cases, you can find a partner, an interesting partner use case if you're doing your research. And if you're a HubSpot shop, you want to make sure that whatever you're buying is integrated with HubSpot. And that's usually pretty easy to find. But there might be problems that could be surfaced to a seller through a conversation if the seller's doing their job, asking the right questions, what are you trying to solve here? Whom are you trying to solve it for?

Guest: Jessie

Who are the buyers? Who are the stakeholders? They're asking all these amazing discovery questions, and if they're enabled on their ecosystem just in time for this partner or for this customer, then they will know which partners to talk about, how to talk about them because they've been enabled ahead of time, which makes them a value add, which makes the customer experience excellent for that customer interacting with that seller. Whereas right now, I love sales, I love salespeople. I have a whole podcast about it. I don't like interacting with B2B sellers. I just don't like it. It's not a great experience. I hate that. The only question I have is how much does it cost? Because I already know. I know how to research and most intelligent buyers do. So I think that just being that value adds by understanding your ecosystem is something that people can't research, and it gives you a leg up as a seller.

Host: Jon

All right. So everybody, real quick, we're talking with Jesse Shipman, and we're just about out of time. And Jesse, I want you to leave the audience with, okay, so I've been listening to this podcast. I am passionate now about my partnerships and my enablement in sales. I want them to trust me. I want to provide value to them, the better together. And yes, I want to be incentivized. How does one get started? What steps should they take to even start this process or to make sure that they're doing their current process right?

Guest: Jessie

Yeah, for sure. So I think engaging with the partnerships community, getting and happy to provide a link in the show notes for how to do that. There are some incredible communities out there. And also people you should follow just on LinkedIn and start having a conversation about who might be the first better together story that you want to build and be really, don't try to go out and recruit 500 partners. Find one tech partner whom you want to build a better together story with, and then start engaging with their partner teams. Start engaging with their sales teams, even if it's just to have a conversation and ask what they need. Be curious. But then from there, once you've sort of built out a use case, you have a good story you're going to need. So figure out how you're going to communicate the value of partnerships to your executive leadership because there are things that have to be invested in. Partnerships are a long game. It can take 12 to 18 months to start to see any turnaround from relationship building in terms of revenue. And so understanding what the KPIs and OKRs should be, and again, that goes back to just engaging with the partner community. There are plenty of us out there who have done this before and done it excellently and have lots to offer.

Host: Jon

I think being truthful and honest that you want to be, grow this partnership and not just go in there and like, okay, I want them to sell for me, or I got to sell for them, and you're passionate about it. I think growing that relationship will take time. But if they see that that's what you want to do and if you want to help provide value, that relationship will grow over time. And speaking of time, it does take time to invest in it. If you honestly invest in it, you will get it returned it. You touched on key metrics. Metrics are important because you want to make sure that you're going through everything in your progressions, that you're getting back what you're putting in, and that the value is there. I'm not saying don't invest in a relationship or a partnership if you're not getting the metrics in return, because those are long-term. That's the long game that you're playing, but you want to make sure that it's a give-and-take type of relationship. Jesse, is there anything you'd like to leave the audience with before we wrap things up?

Guest: Jessie

You can catch me on LinkedIn. I'm Jesse Shipman. There's, I'd spell it with an I e if you're looking for me. So happy to engage in any kind of conversation, and connect you with folks given where you're at in your partnerships journey or your sales journey. And if there's anybody out there who's like me, rocket partnerships and sales, and you want to be on my podcast, just go ahead and reach out on LinkedIn and we'll get you on.

Host: Jon

Jessie. I love it though. You did a plugin for your podcast. I was just about to do that. You can find her podcast wherever you find podcasts. And I'm assuming you're on Apple, right?

Guest: Jessie

Yes, apple, and Spotify. All the things.

Host: Jon

All the things. I will put a link in the description as well. Jesse, thank you so much for joining me. This has been awesome.

Guest: Jessie

Awesome. Thanks, Jon.

Host: Jon

All right, everybody. Jesse Shipman, my name's Jon Myer. Thanks for watching the Jon Myer podcast. Don't forget to hit that, like subscribe and notify, because guess what, we're out of here.