27 - Building Trust and Adding Value in Partnership Programs- Bryan Williams - Friends with Benefits

Episode Transcript
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Sam Yarborough (00:25):
Welcome, welcome, welcome friends.
We got another great episodetoday.

Jason Yarborough (00:29):
Yeah, a good friend that I've gotten to know
over the past year or so, ourfirst international guest.
We are an international show.
We're global, baby.
Way down under in the Australiamates with Mr.
Brian Williams.
Yeah.
It was great.
Yeah, we had a good go at it.
Pick up on that line here in alittle bit.

(00:49):
We're adopting that as a family.
Yeah, we've used it a lot thispast week since we recorded.
We really have.
Yeah, it works.
We have a go at it.
So yeah, so what's, what's goingon here?
We're off, uh, we're off on ourgood go jaunt this week,
tomorrow.
Yeah,

very exciting.
When this airs, we are bothgoing to be in the Big Apple.

In the city.
Yeah, Hallmark movie stuff,right?
Yeah.
But you're doing Salesforcestuff and I'm just Tagging
along.
Yeah, piggybacking.

It's, uh, Salesforce New York World Tour,
for those of you that celebrate,um, favorite conference of the
year, and Jason gets to join forthe back half.
We have a mom and dad date forAbout 24 hours.

Yeah, in the city.
I, uh, one of those situationswhere I logged into Delta to
find out that I've got a ton ofcredits expiring at the end of
the year.
So I was able to, uh, move someflights and stuff to use some
credits.
So, use this as a reminder,friends, that if you've got
unused credits, they expire intwo weeks.

Wait, I actually am going to use that reminder
because I

probably do too.
I just discovered that and I nowget to go to New York.
So this is very nice.

I learned something every time

we record this podcast.
It's more for us than you guys.
I promise you that.
Uh, the podcast though.
Without further ado.
You'll get a lot out of Brianhere.
I think he's one of the morestrategic.
Fault leaders in our space.
Very good at what he does withhockey stick advisors, working
with customers, clients,whatever you want to call it to
teach them how to, you know,strategically implement
partnerships.

(02:19):
He's advising on that.
And we've had a lot of reallygreat conversations.
And since we've recorded Brian,I've exchanged a few more
messages about that.
And I think he's got somethingreally good at hockey stick.
And I think you'll think so too.
So

enjoy the show friends.
We'll see you next time.
See y'all

later.
Mr.
Brian Williams, our firstinternational guest.
Welcome to Friends withBenefits, my man.

Bryan Williams (02:41):
Thanks, Javi, great to be here with yourself
and Sam today and, uh, long timecoming this one, so I look
forward to getting into it.

Yeah, it has been a long time coming.
Took a, took a little bit oftime scheduling due to time zone
conflicts and stuff.
And, uh, you know, it's funny.
Sam asked last night, he's like,he's got an Australian accent,
right?
And I was like, yes.
I was like, oh boy.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know if we can set, um,
subtitles if we need to or wecan translate or, uh, work it
forward, but hopefully we shouldbe okay.

I'm a fan.
Our first international guest.
We got friends worldwide now.

yeah, we're, we're going global, like, we
tried to get the, uh, you know,the, the jet to fly over and do
this recording in person, but,you know, we were low on fuel.

Our sponsorship dollars are not quite there yet.

Yeah,

yeah, I get it.

yeah.

dream big, right?

That's it, you know, everything in person, like
Rich Roll and Joe Rogan justbringing all of our guests to
us.

Yeah, that's right,

Goals.
FY25.
Here we come.
So, Brian, you are a force to bereckoned with in the partnership
world, but who is Brian Williamsto his friends?

Yeah, sure.
So, as a person or as a businessoperator, what do you mean, Sam?
Go a bit deeper.

As a

How do your, yeah, how do your friends talk,
what do your friends say aboutyou?

Yeah, um, I think, uh, I'm probably someone
who likes to have a go in life,at various, uh, aspects of
whatever I sort of pursuemyself, um, or go after.
Also, I don't take myself tooseriously, like to have a laugh
along the way.
Which I think we should all do.
So, uh, quite a, quite a loyalfriend and, uh, I like to look
out for people and help peopleon their journey as well, which
I get a lot of, uh, you know,rewards and I'd like to see as

(04:24):
well.

I like it.
A genuine person who likes tohave a go at life.
I'm going to start using thatline.
I like to have a go at life.
Haven't heard it put that way,but I'm all in on that one, man.
That's fantastic.
What, what does it mean forBrian Williams to have a go at
life?

Well, I think we've all got an opportunity to
do more and be more, whateverthat is, or whatever we pursue
in and around work or familyand, um, You've got the
opportunity to influence othersaround you if you're able to
lead with that and take them onthe journey with you.
A lot of things we talk aroundpartnerships is influencing and,
you know, beyond that of what wedo day to day.
Um, there's no reason why wecan't, you know, uphold that

(05:03):
same sort of belief system anddrive things forward.
I like to say to people, thethings I pursue is, uh, down
here in Australia.
You know, when you retire andget old, um, it's quite common
to play lawn bowls, which isthis pathetic game where you
just bowl, you know, bowl thisold bowl across the green and
then drink half baked beers withlemonade, you know, they call
them shanties, right?

(05:24):
And, um, my grandad and hisgrandad and everyone plays lawn
bowls just as a social outing.
And,

I'm moving.

parent, my wife's parents play lawn bowls
and as I go after variouspursuits of ad hoc, uh, crazy
adventures or do things, I oftenjust say the catch line, like,
why do you do these things?
And I just say, I'm just, I'mjust building lawn bowl stories.
So when I'm old and on thegreen, I've got a bunch of lawn
bowl stories.
That's it.

I love that.
You know, you just describedour, our summer nights here,
except for like bocce ballinstead of, you know, long ball
or whatever it's called, but wedo the same thing out here and
we're not even retired yet,

Yep.
Yep.

Mostly for me, I always tell Sam that here in,
here in the States, you, you cango to like any little diner, you
know, corner cafe or whatever inthe mornings and a bunch of old
guys are sitting around justyakking and sharing stories.
And like, that's my retirementgoals is just to sit around with
a bunch of old guys and havecoffee and

You got to get, you got to get some more stories
going to take to those futureconversations, right?
So, uh, we'll, we'll, uh, we'veonly got this chance once, so
let's make the most of it.

I love that.
Sounds like you're in the rightline of work with that kind of
mentality as well.

Well, speaking of which, I see you repping the,
uh, the swag there.
Tell us what you're up to overat hockey stick advisors.

Yeah.
So, uh, I established a companyabout 18 months ago.
Uh, now, um, previously it wasover at Xero, which is a cloud
based accounting platform.
And I had the fortune to leadthe ecosystem team across
Australia and New Zealand forfive years.
And Throughout time, um, youknow, I went through to grow
from about 150 app partnersthrough to about 1200 upon my
sort of leaving and I was sortof working out before I left.

(06:57):
Yeah, significant.
I probably had about 500different conversations with
companies who want a partner andthrough that lens, I was able to
see what good, bad and bad andterrible looks like, what not to
do.
And, uh, through this littlething called Lockdowns and I'm
based in Melbourne, Australia.
We were not so fortunate to haveone of nearly the longest ones
globally.

(07:17):
I found myself doing someorganic consulting throughout
and helping other companiesfigure out, you know, what is
the partnership opportunity?
How do you start to think aboutand build and move towards
building a partnershipecosystem?
And along with a good network ofauto venture capitalists across
across the region, I foundmyself with a with a playbook I
organically found and started toevolve and And with full

(07:41):
overflowing pipeline of work andopportunities to go help other
companies.
And so I jumped out to set upthe company and I haven't really
looked back.
And so along with three youngkids, which we mentioned at the
start of the call, every minuteof the day counts and I'm seeing
a significant opportunity in themarket to really go after.
And that's really stemmed fromwhere do you learn partnerships?

(08:04):
You can go to a, you can go to amarketing degree.
You can do, uh, you know, MBAs,you can focus, you can do mini
courses, you can get salestraining done, you can build
into a sales leader.
A lot of the partnership leaderscommunity, you see a lot of so
many trailblazers of peopletrying to figure it out that,
uh, and so those who they'relearning from are either
learning from each other orpeople who have been operators

(08:25):
in business and been through thegrowth journey.
And that's where I sort of comein to help other companies grow
through that phase of.
You know, where to resource it,what the opportunity is and how
to go about it and set up thesuccess.
So, I think it's a, there's atime in the market for, for all
of us involved in partnerships,wherever we are, to really
shine, to showcase the impactwe're making and, uh, I'm pretty

(08:48):
bullish of where our industry isgoing, our vertical and the
influence it's going to haveahead.

That's incredible.

I'm just curious for my own asking for a friend
here who like, if somebody wasgoing to work with hockey stick
advisors, who's your ICP?
Like, how do you determine theright type of partners that you
help?

Yeah, it's, it's a funny, as I sort of evolve, I
didn't see the same of, of whatit is and there's, um.
I'll talk about in threebuckets.
The first one is a seed series,a who they've got emerging
partnership opportunities, theCEO, they know people, they've
got all these ambitiousopportunities, maybe land and
expand into other countries.
Maybe it's pursue strategicpartners and that they're trying

(09:31):
to figure it out.
And so they'll look in marketwho can help.
And so I'll come in and workwith them for a period of time
to understand what theopportunity is, what it isn't,
what their partnership valueproposition is.
Should they employ people now orahead?
And what does that look like?
The second bucket, which I getthe most demand is, is people in
community who are inpartnerships and they'll come to
me with challenges, frustrationsor that sort of thing.

(09:54):
Um, that's where I bring inpartnership leaders community
and drive them towards thatbecause what they don't
typically have is that I won'thave budget.
It's their job to do the role.
And I can only help them so, somuch with support in a, in a
scalable way.
And then the third, uh, bucketis big established companies.
Um, who need to refine theirpartnerships, motions, maybe

(10:15):
refine a value proposition,revise their partner program.
Maybe they're progressing intobuilding into an ecosystem and a
platform and how do they bringthat all to life.
So, to answer your question Sam,I'm, so it's getting started and
those looking to optimize andrefine and set up the next stage
of growth.

Makes total

Yeah.
Yeah.
Big, big swath.
They're a big bucket within someof those like that.
You're helping get started.
We, we have, I feel like we havea lot of, um, those partner
managers getting started that,that listened, that I talked to
at least what sort of timeframedo you typically see for someone
to, to achieve a, you know.
Yeah.
An ideal path of value.
So they're looking at coming inand saying, Hey, 3, 6, 8, 9, 18

(10:55):
months.
Like, what are you typicallyadvising them on from a timeline
standpoint?

Yeah, I'd probably take it a step back and
make sure the leadership's allbought in and knows what it is
and what it, what it isn't.
So, any, any engagement I do, I.
I'll make sure I do our initialworkshop with all the leadership
team and I'll just go throughsome fundamentals and make sure
they understand.
Firstly, the strategicopportunity of what it can be,
how they can build a competitiveadvantage, a moat around their

(11:22):
business.
They can build out the businessand don't have to have everyone
on their own payroll andunderstand that it takes time
and There's a graph, I think,uh, the great man, Robert
Superglue, did one of his, uh,his memes or graphs of, you
know, sales, you can put, yeah,there you go, um, resident
neighbor, just, uh, next door,right?
And, uh, you know, like I try alot to roll back and forth and

(11:42):
one of his ones was reallystruck a chord to myself was,
you know, you can pour in asales team and put in five AEs
and try next month, try and getsome sales in and stagnate and
you've got huge payroll costs.
Whereas partnerships, it takesthe ramp time to be able to
build that muscle, to be able totrust the relationships, to work
out that wedded relationship,how you can help each other win,
to then actually realize thebenefits down the track.

(12:05):
So, if the leadership teamdoesn't get that, and if they're
not invested in that properly,strategically, you know, overlay
model, as Jared loves to say,sales, marketing, CX, and what
all that goodness looks like.
Then that partnerships personwhich comes in is, is they're
going to do two things in ayear.
They'll, they'll end up gettingfired or they'll leave

(12:25):
frustrated, under resourced, youknow, lone wolf and quit.
And what, what gives me theshits is when I see companies
who grabbed their bestsalesperson, who's just killing
it, might do say 60 percent ofthe target.
They're like, you're great.
You go do partnerships.
We know this company out ofhere.
Like, they're going to be great.
Go.
And then they give them a salestarget to go extract.

(12:46):
Let's go, let's go and just grabeverything and then that person
tries to take a sales target.
No partner value proposition, nounderstanding of it.
And a year later, they get, walkout the door and they quit and
say it didn't work out orsomething.
And they were previously yourbest

that all too often.
Yep.

common, right?
So, I try to, I try to make thatnot

a lot of them.

Yeah, right?

We need, we need more of us out there that
can keep that from happening andkeep the, uh, the partnership
name and good graces.

Yeah, that's

you, I, I'm so curious on this because we've
talked about this a lot.
Um, you start working withsomebody, is it like a
prerequisite that you meet withtheir leadership team?
Is that like a, a go or no go?

Right.
Um, they've got to be haveproduct market fit, basically
have a value proposition oftheir own offering.
They're not still figuring itout.
The leadership team has to bebought into it.
They're well funded to invest inpartnerships and in a
sustainable way that it takes awhile to get going and curious
around how to resource it.
And bring it to life.

(13:48):
So if it doesn't have thoseparts, and it was actually just
last week, uh, there's someonedown here and emerging company
doing really well.
And the leadership team justdidn't get partnerships.
And despite the other teammembers all trying to rally
behind it, they said, Oh, wecan't get the buy in.
I said, Oh, you're not the rightfit for me.
And it's not going to work.
And it's not going to work foryou either.
If I don't believe inpartnerships and trying to go

(14:08):
down this path, if they want togo direct, if they want to go
outbound and they want to dothat, That's their choice or how
they're going to go to marketand it's not going to work for
them if they just try and Put itoff to the side.
They're just going to fail.
We've all seen the playbook, youknow

Yeah.
Yeah.
Seriously.

plays out.

seeing the same thing out there and people
that I'm talking to is like, youknow, I've talked to.
Jared, everybody else aboutthis, like Nearbound only works
if you can get it outside of thepartner organization, like
you've got to get fullyincorporated into the sales
teams, into the marketing teamsand get them utilizing the data,
the strategy and everythingelse.
And like, there's no way toscale if you don't, otherwise
you're just going to be in thislittle silo as an experiment.

(14:48):
And always referenced to aslike, Oh, the partner team will
handle that.
Like, no, no, like let the salesteam work the, yeah, this is a,
this is a whole, you know,organizational thing.
But yeah, no, ran for anothertime.

well, first of all, I think your list for your
ICP is also a great list forpartner professionals before
they take a job.
So do your research to make sureyou're, you're walking into a.
A role that you'll be successfulin.
Um,

Those three things.

yeah, curious from your experience when you do
meet with this leadership team,how much of your role is like
enablement with them?
Or is it just like ensuring thatthey have buy in?
If that

Yeah, so yeah, that does Yeah, so the
enablement comes after you'vegot the buy in if once they've
got that aha, I get it So thenit becomes the how do we do it?
How do we do it?
And how do we go to market?
So if I, I spend most of my timeworking on the front end
partnership strategy ofanswering those first initial
questions, and then I play asupporting role in the

(15:55):
enablement piece to bring it tolife.
Um, one of the questions, likethe simplest question to ask
across the business and likethis afternoon in Melbourne, I'm
presenting, um, to a company I'mworking with to their team is,
is just one question.
Why would anyone refer you leadsand just be quiet and just let
everyone go just, you know, takea moment.

(16:15):
And the usual answer to anuninformed audience is they'll
say because we're awesomebecause we're good at our job,
which no one cares about at all.
No one cares, right?
You said before, right?
If you're not helping that salesteam person close their targets.
If you're not helping themalongside their workflows, if
you're not adding more value tothe customers, if you're not

(16:37):
helping them hit their own KPIs,commissions on that on an
individual level and working outa way to do it, then they're not
going to care and thepartnership's not going to work.

not at all.
And they're always, they'recontinuing to ask like, what's
in it for the partner?
What's in it for me?
And until you show them thepath, show them the way.

Mm

So I, I've, I've read somewhere about your,
your three step framework aroundbuilding trust first.
Love that also like my firststep.
So, and then remain authenticand then to help your partners
win.
I want to dive into, like, whenit comes to building trust
within a partnership, right?
What does that mean to youspecifically?
And something that's somethingwe obviously we all try to

(17:15):
practice and we all have varyingdegrees of what that means.
So, like, what does buildingtrust first building trust with
your partners look like to you?

Yeah.
So I like the way Jill Rowleysays it of show me, you know,
me, you know, and there'svarious iterations of that.
And I often work through theframework to answer that.
But you're saying what does thecompany care about?
Who is the person responsiblefor achieving that target and
how are they tracking againstthat?
And so to show me, you know meanalogy and building that trust
of I'm here to support you totry and get to your target to

(17:50):
get you promoted to amplify yourbrand to to champion you as a
person.
How can I do that?
And how can I be in that?
In a circle of someone you'dcall for, you know, Intel, all
the things right that we know tobe true.
So if you can't get that levelof buy in that you could ring
someone and ask them for Intelfor a deal or something, then if

(18:11):
that trust doesn't exist, thenhow are you actually building up
the partnership?
Uh, truly right to help eachother win, which goes both ways.

Yeah.
So if you're, if you're cominginto a program.
And you're looking to get thoseearly trust wins first, get that
relational equity in the bank.
Like what is, what is, what doesBrian Williams start by doing?

You've got, you've got to add value
immediately.
And, and, um, one of thetakeaways from Catalyst was from
Chris Casey, who's at AWS.
Um, one of his points, what heencourages his team for, and I
continue to use this quote ishow fast can you show value to
your partners?
So from the onset, is it someoneyou can connect them with?
Are they tracking on target?

(18:54):
Is there a way that you can addcontribute, make connections,
Intel influence?
Is there a way that you canactually showcase or highlight
them initially without askingfor anything?
You need to actually take thatquantum leap to build forward,
to make them have that ah hamoment, that you're there to
actually help them achieve whatthey personally care about and

(19:14):
moving towards.
So, once you get that buy in,

yeah, I like that.
I think a lot of, a lot of earlyprograms miss out on like just
simply asking.
Like, what do you, what do youneed out of a partnership?
Like, what's going to be mostvaluable to you, right?
And there's, you know, simplequestions you can ask to
understand like what theyactually are looking for and
what they need and where theirother partnerships are failing,
you can come in on your, youknow, your, on your white horse

(19:40):
riding in to save the day andshow them like, if you, as long
as you can deliver, likethere's, there's a lot of
opportunity to just get thattrust and build that value early
on by building exactly, youknow, what they need.

I think I love what you just hit on to though,
Brian, because from the lens ofa new partner person, it can
often look like value only comesin the form of leads and
revenue.

Mm hmm.

yes, that's the goal, but that can take time.
And so, to your point, it cancome in other forms too of like,
Making intros, um, you know,helping drive marketing value,
helping drive messaging.
Like it doesn't always have tobe leads and revenue.

No.
Yeah.
But, if

early on, it's probably not going to be that.

exactly.
Yeah.

If you know, when we talked about earlier,
making sure that leadershipunderstands that we need to earn
our way in and that we need togo through this over investment
early in over index, it's it'smore outputs that we need to put
out and make sure we're showingthat value and building that
trust before we can expect theinputs of the leads of revenue
to come back in return.
Right.
And, um, chatting to Logan atteamwork and you know, I know

(20:55):
some of the work they've hadsuccess working with HubSpot.
Yeah.
Right.
There's big players, monday.
com and click up and smartsheetand others and teamwork's the
upcomer, you know, secondaryplayer out of Ireland of all
places.
And they've got buy in and cutthrough with, with HubSpot
because Logan does such anawesome job on his own podcast
and the content that he punchesout that they help support
HubSpot and HubSpot's nowpromoting to their massive

(21:16):
audience about teamwork andthrough that stuff as well.
So teamwork shouldn't being thatconversation on a customer for
customer size around it, butthere weren't no way in another
way around it.
And I think it's a, it's areally good example of it's not
always leads and revenue if youhave a small upcomer.
And I work with a lot ofemerging companies are coming
through and I'll, I've, I've gotme saying, we say, all right,

(21:37):
well write down the biggestpartners you want to work with.
And you say, okay, uh, AWS,Hyperscale, you know, Google.
Right.
Okay.
And the next question I say isright now, get your pen and
just.
Just put a line for it.
Just forget about that.
Okay.
Cause they don't care about you.
I don't care.
You're at one of 15, 15, 000 andthey're like, all right, well
now what do we do?
Okay.
Well, who I was emergingalongside you, who's similar

(21:59):
size aligned values, similarsize company, similar size team,
who's on the bus to go with you.
And if it was a company, youonly got a hundred customers,
but you work at typerelationship with someone else
who's got a hundred customersand they provide a lot of
introductions.
Isn't that more better thanpegging a logo onto a slide pack
to tell your investors and hopesand dreams Spending two years of
work and not much materializingwhatsoever at all.

100%.

So I have a question for, we keep going back
to this, like making the casefor partnerships.
And we've talked about thisbefore, but I'd love to hear
your perspective on this.
Um, A new alliances leader comesinto a role and they report to
the CRO and the CRO immediatelyis like, you have a source to
number you have an influencenumber go.

(22:46):
How do you suggest this allianceleader makes the case to that
leader?
This is going to take time.
And here are the leadingindicators I'm doing to get
there.
How would you advise somebody?

Yeah, how'd you frame it up?
So firstly, I would set theclear expectations that I need
time to go do my research I needto understand what the TAM, SAM,
SOM is around how my approach isgoing to go about it and I need
that window and The confidenceand support to allow me to go do
a market assessment You can't.
It's not a case of day to get onthe phones, bang around and say

(23:18):
you've got all these logomeetings going nowhere because
you've jumped to solution mode.
You haven't actually worked outwhat you can offer, how you can
help people who's to prioritizetop 10 partners.
So make sure you've got that buyin to be able to do that from
there to be able to come backand report with an intentional
plan that these are the top 10identified partners.
This is our approach of howwe're going about it.
This is the song within thosepartners.

(23:41):
What is the next sort of 30 to90 days to then be able to
confidently come back and say,well, we know the partner source
opportunity in here to partnerinfluenced opportunity, but now
I need these resources toactually enable that to bring it
to life.
So if you want, if you want thepromised land of this revenue
number of partner source andpartner influence, then.

(24:01):
That new high should be able toactually look at that number and
talk to it with confidencebecause if it's you want to say
get partner source leads from 20to 40 percent then you're going
to need things to be able to getthere.
It's not a case of just hire aperson and send him in the field
and think that there's going tobe a fire hose of customers to
lead in and where I see there'sa.

(24:24):
A sales leader with a strictsales background of outbound or
building IE, IE, IE, and thenthey put partnership person in
that role and say, you goextract 12 months for a person's
gone.
It doesn't, it doesn't work.
So it's, yeah, I'll keep comingback to that leadership buying
and understanding of how itworks.

(24:44):
But the intentionality, if youwant to try and get to a plan
and then deliver on it and standbehind that number.
But you've got an assessment ofwho the partners are, what
resources you need, then you'rerunning, you are the
entrepreneur running your own P&L to actually go and deliver
against that.

100%.

I love that too, because I feel like partner
teams are often put in this roleof like, go deliver and you
know, no, I hope, but no salesteam is ever just going to call.
We're going to close 300 milthis quarter.
And they have no pipeline, noplan to get there, no strategy.
Like we as partner leaders needto toe the line on building

(25:24):
those expectations around ourprograms too, because just like
marketing, just like sales.
We need a pipeline.
We need a strategy.
We need to be able to forecastthese things.
And to your point, Brian, thattakes time and planning.

Mm hmm.
Yeah.

Getting the, getting the trust, building the
value takes time.
And one question I did have foryou is like in all this
leadership, uh, consulting andgetting the buy in and talking
to the leadership about gettingbuy in and stuff like that.
Do you ever lead them down thepath around the value of like,
just simply building therelationship with the partners,
with the new partners and like,how do you, how do you get them

(26:00):
to think about that?
Cause most cases, like the CROis really not going to care
about that.
Nine times out of 10, I wouldsay maybe, maybe a little less,
but you know, it's, it'simportant, right?
You know, we, we joke that we,we get paid to make friends and,
and, you know, sell againstthose friendships sometimes.
So how do you talk to the salesleaders while you're getting

(26:20):
that buy in around like theimportance of building
relationship with partners?

Yeah.
I like Jocko Willink's bookabout, uh, you know, he goes on
his rant about managing up thatsort of thing, Javi, and setting
those expectations around whatdo you need to set up for
succeeding around it.
It's, um.
Your leader, my leader, everyoneelse is working in a company,
despite what the targets andwhat the boss, you know, whoever

(26:50):
it might be, implement orexpectations, they also don't
want to fail themselves.
So how do you present the casethat you're set up for success,
your team set up for success tobe able to hit the number, you
know, the great leader will setup their teams for success and
then get out of the way and givethem what their resources to do
it.
And they're not giving you atarget in isolation to To go

(27:11):
fail.
So then they fail.
So when they go report to theboard and said partnerships was
a failure, that's on them.
So if you're able to outlinewhat you need to be able to get
to that promised land to hit thetarget, to hit the number.
To be able to do it.
It's a very differentconversation than just saying,
Oh, I can't do it or I don'tknow how or I've got all these
logos I'm chatting to.

(27:32):
I've got this ghost pipeline oflogos, which with no substance
behind it.
It's a very differentconversation.

It is a hundred percent.
And, you know, go back to yourinitial points.
I get it.
You got, you got to base those,those projections and everything
based off the amount of trustthat you've got with those
partners and who's most leanedin and who's, who's there that
you can call for that Intel orinfluence or intros and getting
them to take that quickestaction.
So leading, leading into likethat, that relationship

(28:00):
conversation, like you, you comefrom an extensive background and
like, you know, at marketplaces,obviously, um, I think that's,
that's a, that category is ahard one for a lot of people to
get right.
You seem to have had a fairamount of success in there.
So like, how do you, how do youadvise people to build strong
relationships that get younoticed within these app

(28:22):
marketplaces and largeecosystems?

Yeah, so I see companies that you grow from one
to one from partnership into anecosystem and you put a partner
program in place in lots of, inlots of ways to manage scale,
right?
How do you have any newmilestones and your steps and
partner programs are alwaysbuilt, been building, never
built, and they're evolving.
And how do you stand out amongsta sea of choices, either in a
hyperscaler market or workingwith platforms?

(28:48):
And if there's 8, 000 apps, whydoes anyone care about you?
Well, there's a few ways, so, ifyou live solely on the platform,
and you're an Atlassian only,you're a Salesforce only, you're
a HubSpot only, then the tablestakes to play and participate
in that, like doing your taxes,is just to play by their rules.

(29:09):
So that's 101.
You need to just, okay, get anintegration, get a webpage.
Do all the basics around it.
And from there, from there to beable to progress and move
forwards to, you know,aspirationally, you want to be
the partner of choice.
And what I mean by that and whatI see is how can you be the
easiest partner to work with?
How can you play by all theirrules?

(29:31):
How can you generate and solvereal customer problems, then
build truckloads of reviews onthe back of it?
And and build it along, but whatcompanies often fail if they're
building only on one platform iswhat they are is that they've
got no influence with thosepartners.
In reality, they're one ofthousands and they're dependent
on them.
And so sooner or later, you willstall your growth depending on

(29:55):
what that platform allows toparticipate.
If it's not an in productexperience, that's part of a
contextual workflow, which someplatforms do to a degree.
Man, you're a number withintheir app store or within their
directory.
And so the broader opportunity,um, there's two ways, and I work
a lot of companies in this spacebecause they're, they've stuck,
they've limited their growth ofhowever far they get.

it.
Yep.

who, who is the partners, partners, you're in
the HubSpot ecosystem, who's alltheir agency partners around it,
then what are those agencypartners care about?
It's usually two things.
Number one.
If they want net new business,if you're small, you probably
can't deliver on that.
And secondly, can you add moreservices revenue or add more
value for their current clients?
So how do you deliver againstone of those things and build an

(30:42):
offering around it?
And secondly to that, if you'regoing down the agency route for
carrying on off my point is whatelse is selling to those
agencies?
What else are they doing?
Is it HubSpot plus plus pluswhat?
And you need to elevate yourselfto make sure that they care
about you more than those otherpartners around that.
Right.
So that's on the, how do youwork with the partners,

(31:03):
partners, the platform.
And then, and then the secondpoint is how do you work?
And I mentioned this before withother app partners also in that
ecosystem who are buying for theattention.
So if you both play to the tablestakes and say, all right, this
is the HubSpot rules Glassian.
And you say, all right, well,rather than try and wait for

(31:24):
them to unlock opportunities andthis firehose of customers.
It's saying, all right, well,we're going to do stuff
together.
Now we're going to use nearbound principles and bring that
to life.
We're going to share leadslists.
We're going to Intel influence.
We're going to go to marketwhere, um, OPM other people's
money.
We're going to use our own salesproduct marketing and work
together to grow together.
We've got these better togethernarrative and, and the easiest

(31:47):
way I work with companies to dothat is just, just ask your
customers, just ask the survey.
What have I used before andafter you, that's how you'll
prioritize your partners, buildout your partner value
proposition away again.

I love a lot of that plays.
I was actually just having thisconversation the other day with
someone in the HubSpotecosystem.
And I think there's so muchvalue and it's often overlooked
of like, to just work withinthat ecosystem.
Like, how can you connect thechannel partners that work with
your tech partners and that workwith that, that alliances
partner, right?
So how do you create turnkeyecosystem is what we called it

(32:20):
when I was a terminus around allthese people that are working
within the same technologies andthe same services.
So I think there's a ton ofoverlooked value there that that
people tend to miss out onespecially as they're getting
started In these biggerecosystems.

Yeah.
Well,

that.

yeah.
And, and furthermore, everypicture of HubSpot agency
partner, they're right now goingto have a certain amount of team
size, resources, and capabilityto go produce their own revenue
as an operating business.
So if you want to get into thatmold, then you're straight away
a distraction, a pain in theass, option 700 to them.

(33:01):
So once again, you come back towhat do they care about?
What does the company careabout?
Who's responsible for it?
How are they tracking againstit?
You need to build your valueproposition to actually help
them add layers to it.
So is there someone therelooking to drive additional
revenue?
Are they trying to do upsells?
Do they have a churn orretention problem that you can
slot in?
As a part of it.

(33:21):
Can you do you have a bettertogether value proposition with
HubSpot insert platform, right?

I love what you said there about just assume
from the get go you're a pain inthe ass because it's true.

Yeah.

That's the baseline for everything.
So, you know, if it wasn'talready obvious that you have to
add value from the get go, youare a pain in the ass.
So you need to start to changethat perspective.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.
I do have like, you know, hearfrom a little bit from your
experience.
So you, you, you scaled your,your.
Ecosystem to 1200 partners.
Obviously there were somesmaller people in there, but can
you recall a time where, youknow, someone new or maybe
smaller, like got your attentionand like what they did to do so,
and, and, and made you kind oftake a look at someone that you

(34:11):
met that may have beenoverlooked by something they
did.

Um, I think, um, it was a few companies I can
think of top of mind who justreally wrapped.
They built a community aroundour community and so all of our
biggest advocates andevangelists and early adopters,
they went hard at bringing themclose to themselves.
And so they removed theiralliance on the zero platform by
actually building.
Our advocates is theirs andrunning with them.

(34:36):
And so they got all that brandadvocacy endorsements and
running.
Well, um, pretty quickly.
Um, that's pretty smart way to

attention and your team's attention by working
with the same people thatalready had their attention.

Yeah, and then they start.
Yeah, right.

squared.

Yeah.
And then all of a sudden we werenearly like forced to sponsor or
get involved in events because Ihad captured all our community
and not, not taken it, butshifted it as well.
And so we're around it, right?
So then they get acceleratedupside and they get the
virality, the network effects,and all of a sudden they've got
an accelerated growth path to doit.
So, but, but a really, a reallyinteresting takeaway is every,

(35:13):
every big company platform's gota partner program of evolving
key accounts.
We'll work more at the top,spend all our team up here, get
them humming.
And everyone else ends up in aqueue.
Oh, you're here, you're in thisbox, or maybe this box, and
you'll get some half bakedbenefits as you progress, right?
But interesting takeaway is thepartners which groove are

(35:33):
fastest.
We're the ones who helped theXero sales team win.
Funny that, right?
Partner program aside.
Oh, we've got all these.
No, we work with these partners.
We do more here.
We're going to do webinars andour co marketing our efforts.
And we're growing a whole teamof care.
Hang on.
No, no.
Xero sales team.
What are your KPIs targets?
What is your month?
Are you tracking against that?
What's your quarter?
Suddenly, organically, the appswhich help them convert more

(35:57):
customers, migrate, go faster,help their customers win.
They've got this acceleratedupside partner program kind of
in the trash.
So there's other ways to goabout it and it comes back to
our point at the start of thecall.
Think of making sure you knowthe workflows, how you fit in,
help the agency, help the otherapp partner grow, you know, and

(36:19):
then away you go.

I

back to that, that V word

on though.
Yeah.
I mean, I live and breatheSalesforce and this is what we
preach to people all the time.
It's like top down is only goingto work if you also have a
bottom up approach.
And that's exactly what you'retalking about.
Like partnerships.
If you remove all of the fluffis people doing business with
people and if you can help salesteams drive their individual

(36:46):
goals, they're going to bringyou in.
That's how you're going tocreate the flywheel and it's so
simple, but it's so overlooked.
So it has to be bottom up andtop down.

Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Fully agree.

think that's why I love to, like, my, my
focus has always been like, howdo we get the sales team more
involved?
Once the sales team getsinvolved with the sales team,
they'll work on each other,helping them hit their goals.
And that frees us, the partnerleaders up to really focus on,
you know, go to marketstrategies, the relationship and
providing that, that value outto the partner.
So we're not so much focused onlike being a glorified BDR.

(37:23):
But we're more focused on likethe bigger strategic initiatives
that need to get done to pushthese programs forward and to
bring on new partners.
And it's like, I'm going to dieon my deathbed preaching,
getting, you know, partnershipsout of the partner, you know,
silo, but that's, that's, that'swhere it's at, man.

yeah, yeah,

So let's, let's take a quick, a quick,
hard turn here as we, uh, bringthis home, you and I got a
chance to meet in, in Denver atCatalyst, went on a lovely
morning run with our, actuallythe, our previous, uh, guest,
Justin Zimmerman and crew.
We had a nice little run aroundthe lake and then decided, you
know what?

(38:02):
We want to do some more running.
Let's just keep going becausewe're crazy like that.
And brownies have a good go atit.
So we ran an extra three miles.
Uh, so I'm getting at here is,uh, I was reading up on you a
little bit as we were preparingfor this, this.
Um, podcast and you entered anIronman triathlon a few years
ago.
You had no bike.
You weren't a strong swimmer.

(38:24):
Most of you would probably belike, Brian WTF.
Like what's wrong with you?
You know, what, what

given a go at life.

yeah, comes back to, yeah, yeah.
So, uh, I mean, it was a, yeah,a chapter in my life and I had,
um, someone else I'd seen do itthe year before and, uh, they
were a bit older and they saidlike, well, what's stopping you
if you don't do it now beforekids, then the amount of time
and commitment and training.
You're required to be able toget this done.
It's got a pull the trigger,right?

(38:53):
So, uh, yeah.
So, uh, yeah, that was a bigyear of learnings and, uh, I
think a lot of that discipline,grit, perseverance and is, you
know, in running my own businessor building the future of what I
hope to sort of achieve is apart of that, right, and
translates over.
I

Yeah, no doubt.
And I was very curious to hearsome of that as well as like,
how have you seen that kind oftranslate into your everyday
life?
Like I started many years agotraining for a triathlon.
I know the work that goes intoit.
I decided that I didn't want todo the swimming part.
So I was like, you know,triathlons aren't for me, but
you stuck with it.
You had the determination, thegrid, like how, how are you, you

(39:35):
know, leaning on some of that,that grid of, of training and
enduring such, you know, thetriathlons are hard, man.
Like, how does that, you know,play into your everyday life
now?

think everyone working in partnerships is hard.
Everyone's got big loftytargets.
You've got internalstakeholders, external
stakeholders.
You're trying to, you're tryingto actually reach ambitions and
goals, which, uh, you believein, but you've got to get buy in
around it and you've got to dothe work, right?
So, you know, the discipline totrain for a few different events

(40:06):
and with a goal in time, call ita QBR, call it annual planning,
a target to deliver the event isquite translatable, right?
So, you know, for me, as I.
You know, as my kids sleepincrementally better by 0.
01%, you know, uh, monthly, aswe were talking about at the
start, you know, I've got sortof a chance to, to get out the

(40:28):
door a little bit more now andI, I see it as a competitive
advantage to, because I want tobe a sharp operator and dialed
in, um, in order to sort of howI think about growing my
business too.

I love it.
And I love like the mentalitythat people like Jocko and David
Goggins people bring to thetable.
And when I'm working out in themornings or doing something
stupid, I'm thinking of Gogginsthinking that we, we only put,
we, no one really puts theirbody to a stress level of 40
percent of what we're capable ofdoing.
And I got to believe the same istrue for like work or pushing

(41:00):
ourselves to, to, to our exceedour expectations.
We might think we're, you know,pushing hard, but maybe we're at
a max 40%.
There's so much that we can giveand push.
And so like, you know, as I'm inmy garage at like four 30 in the
morning, I'm thinking aboutthat.
And I find that a lot of that,you know, perseverance and that
grit and the ability to justkeep on, you know, being

(41:21):
consistent plays into everythingelse in life.
You find that you're moredisciplined in your diet, more
disciplined in your daily work,or you have to be disciplined in
your sleep.
And all that factors in to likehow you show up every day.

that's right.
Yeah.
Consistency is such acompetitive advantage in itself
of just showing up.
Right.
And, you know, like to take itto the next level.
I remember was chatting a tieand he was talking about his
time at deal and saying thatwhen you get a partnership going
and truly get heading in theright direction, he used to
encourage his top his team thereto have those meetings and ask
the question.
How can we 10 X thispartnership?

(41:56):
If you've already got themotions going, but what a great
ambitious target to sort of Toput it out there on a whiteboard
session to actually imagine afive extra partnership how how
you both win on both sides.
It's It's we know partnershipstakes a while and it ramps up
But you know, we know we've allseen at work and we know what it
can and should be but how do weget there?

Agreed completely.
So.
I also saw, I love this, thatyou are a weekend warrior.
Now you've mentioned your kids afew times, um, since we've been
recording.
Can you tell us how many kids,how old they are, all of

yep.
So yeah, so we've got a fiveyear old Henry, you know, we
live in Melbourne Australia likeI said and We also got nearly
three year old twins as well.
So a boy and a girl, Archer andPoppy.
So it's a constant chaosweather.
Actually, everything really isconstant chaos what it is.
So, uh, yeah, that's, uh,definitely keeps us on our toes,

(42:57):
um, ongoing.

I mean, we have two kids, um, we do not have
three kids, let alone twins.
Um, being physically active,which like you're very committed
to this.
Running your own business, beingvery active in the partner
leaders community, being acommitted dad.
That's a lot.

(43:19):
How do you prioritize and giveyour 100 percent to all of these
facets?
Mm

It's a constant juggle and there's an
opportunity cost always, right.
Sam's like, to your point, soyou know, to yi's mentality of
if I go running, I'm going earlyat like 5:00 AM and getting it
done, that's my window to lockthat in.
And, but if I'm running then,then I've gotta prioritize to
get the bed early and if have abad night sometimes case of suck
it up and keep going.
Uh, I say no to a lot of thingsof one-on-one meetings because I

(43:46):
can't, for scale, especially forthe people working in
partnerships and.
What I do for one on one catchups is I spend a lot of time
going to conferences or speakingis in the month leading up as
people are coming through in theindustry, I say, Hey, let's
catch up at that conference.
So next week, partnershipleaders, Christmas drinks here
in Melbourne, uh, for catch upsthat I've had sort of over the

(44:09):
last month, or I was at an eventon Monday night here, rather
than have that time one on onehalf an hour, I have one to
many.
I can go to an event and haveall those meetings and
crowdsource it there.
To go with it.
So yeah, you've got to reallyprotect your time for all the
things because yeah, I do wantto be around for the kids and,
and I want to get my exercise inbecause it makes me everything

(44:31):
else sharpened up as the Yabi'spoints.
And I want to be, you know, agreat husband and still spend
time and families.
And already we've, we've got allof our vacations booked in next
year.
You know, I've got my plans andthe conferences and the plan
and, and there's windows to doit, but I don't have.
I don't have time in my day.
I don't, you know, my tt I don'twatch tv, I don't have time.

(44:51):
I don't, you know, so Iprioritize.
And so, um, I'm always thinkingabout scale on the business
front and how can you reach abroader audiences.
And I spend a lot of timetalking to podcasts like this or
presenting to VC portfolios.
And it means I don't have coffeecatch-ups, I don't have wasted
meetings.
There's always an agenda and I'mpurposeful around how I approach

(45:12):
my day.

Yeah, I love that.
I remember when we were talkingto the McBain's on this show,
they said something similar, butthey took scale from a business
perspective and they talkedabout how they can implement
that in their personal lives.
And I think they were talkingabout like, get your groceries
delivered, somebody does yourlaundry, and I was like, what?

Yeah.

Mind blowing and life changing, so agreed.

yeah,

it all.

yeah, yeah, where possible.
Like what can you automate to adegree, right?
So I'm spending time with thekids during kids time and I'm
not at the shops doing groceriesor other things around there,
right?
So, um, yeah.

Yeah, no doubt.
So I was, I was privy to one ofthose messages from, from Brian
Wood and says, Hey, you're goingto be at catalyst.
Let's catch up.
Uh, curious to know, uh, what,what conferences you're, you're
targeting next year, whichyou're going to be attending.

Yeah, so I'll be back stateside for Catalyst
whenever that is in August.
So look forward to sort ofcatching up with everyone there.
Um, down here in Australia, eachstate has their own.
Tech based conference.
Uh, this year in October, we hadSouth by Southwest Sydney, which
was the first time it'sinternational.
It was in Sydney.
And, um, that was quite a,that's quite a big week.

(46:27):
Uh, I've had about 10, 000people along over the week and
across four different streams ofwhat it is.
Um, and there's one from like,there's a conference in the
Great Barrier Reef, the TropicalInnovation Conference, which is
a good time.
Uh, there's one happening

one to the calendar, Sam.

Yeah, there's one happening.
There's one happening this weekin Perth, which I couldn't make
called Tech West.
There's one down in AdelaideHills called South Start.
Um, the government's here.
Invest Victoria, invest NewSouth Wales and Queensland have
got conferences and teamshelping enable and building tech
and scaling that out.
So there's definitely a growingscene down here, um, across the

(47:01):
regions and once again, wherethere's an opportunity for me to
present at scale, you know, toan audience is at scale.
It's me living in market.
You know, uh, driving valueoutwards, and then as a result,
opportunities come, come, keepcoming, and we've got the
flywheel spinning.

Love it.
That's great, man.
I look forward to seeing you atCatalyst again next year and
going on a couple of runs.
So, uh, let's, let's bring thisone home with our, our final out
of the ordinary question.
Uh, if you were to, so intypical, you know, Ironman
triathlon form for BrianWilliams and having to go at it.
If you were to try one extremesport without preparation, what

(47:41):
would it be?

Oh, that's a good question.
Um, I like that there's thisevent in the, uh, Swiss, Swiss
Alps all around.
I think it's got like one of theRed Bull series, and you hike up
a mountain, and then you jumpoff with a parachute.
And then see how far you canparaglide, and then you hike to
the next mountain and do it.
And it goes on for about a week,but it just sounds pretty
gnarly.
And, uh, that'd be a prettygood, you know, lawn bowl story

(48:04):
in years ahead, right?

absolutely.
I love that.

full circle.

For a second there.
I thought you were going to gowith like, is it in Switzerland
where they roll that wheel ofcheese down the wheel and you
got to chase it.
Whoever catches it first, likewins that like, but

Nah, it's in the UK.
Yeah, it's in southern England.
Yeah, I know it won't.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Another

this is awesome.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, this has been fantastic.
Thanks so much for hanging outwith us, spending some time.
I know it's a morning for youafternoon for us.
Uh, but it's been a really goodconversation.

Yeah, thanks guys.
Uh, great to sort of, uh, share,share war stories and definitely
what, what things could andshould be ahead.
So, uh, love the chat.

Yep.

So for friends who are looking to find you, is
LinkedIn the best place?

Yeah, uh, LinkedIn, I'm pretty active on
various partnership musings orwhere I'm popping up at relevant
events or, you know, check outhockeystickadvisory.
com, um, as I'm continuing tosort of grow out the business.

Awesome.
Well, Brian, thanks so much.
Friends, we'll see you nexttime.

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27 - Building Trust and Adding Value in Partnership Programs- Bryan Williams

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