Partnering for Success: Building Trust and Specialization with Joseph Khalaf

Episode Transcript
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Anthony Carrano (00:06):
Welcome to the IAMCP Profiles and Partnership,
the podcast that showcases howMicrosoft partners and IAMCP
members boost their business bycollaborating with other members
and partners. I'm your co-host,Anthony Carrano. And in each
episode, I'll be talking to someof the most innovative and
successful partners in theMicrosoft ecosystem. The

(00:26):
International Association ofMicrosoft Channel Partners,
otherwise known as IAMCP, is acommunity of Microsoft partners
who help each other grow andthrive. Members can find and
connect with other partnerslocally and globally and access
exclusive resources andopportunities.
Whether you're looking for newcustomers, new markets, or new
solutions, IAMCP can help youachieve your goals. We'll hear

(00:49):
their stories, learn from theirexperiences, and discover the
best practices and strategiesthey use to increase customer
loyalty and grow revenues.Whether you're a new partner or
an established one, you'll findvaluable insights and
inspiration in this podcast. Wehope you enjoy this podcast and
find it useful and inspiring. Ifyou do, please subscribe, rate,

(01:09):
and review us on your favoritepodcast platform. And don't
forget to follow us on socialmedia and connect with us on our
website,www.profilesandpartnership.com,
where you can find moreinformation, resources, and
opportunities to partner forsuccess. Thank you for
listening. Now let's get startedwith today's episode.
But before we dive into ourinterview, let me ask you, what

(01:31):
role do partnerships play inyour business model and growth
strategy? And how are youinvesting in not only the
relationship, but also in theskills and resources your
partners need to be successful?
We dive into these questions andmore as our guest discusses how
being a member of the IAMCP hascontributed to building a robust
partner program and sharesexamples of successful

(01:53):
collaborations that have drivensignificant achievements. Are
you ready to join us on thisjourney? Then stay tuned because
we have a great show for youtoday. Our guest is Joseph
Khalaf, the president at ampiOSolutions, a Microsoft partner
with numerous specializationsand designations that help
organizations maximize theirROI, increase employee

(02:14):
productivity, and decreaseoperational cost. Let's hear
what he has to say.
Welcome Joe to the podcasttoday. Thanks for joining us.

Joseph Khalaf (02:23):
Thank you for having me Anthony and Rudy.

Well, well, we're looking forward to a great
show, with you today. But let'sstart off. Tell us a little bit
about yourself and your role inthe company.

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Joe Khalaf, Joseph
Califf, I go by Joe. And I'm thepresident of ampiO Solutions. We
are a Microsoft partner. We area solution designated in four of
the six solution designations,modern, work, security, Azure
infrastructure, data, and AI.

(02:55):
Based here in Dallas, Texas,we've been around for thirteen
years. And I personally hailfrom Microsoft. I spent
seventeen years at Microsoftbefore starting ampiO. And yeah,
that's simply really what welive and breathe. Sales team
always talks about drinking theKool Aid. We drink the Microsoft

(03:18):
Kool Aid. That's all we do.That's all we kind of want to
do. We want to be veryspecialized. We want to be very
focused and we just want to helpour customers and our partners
maximize their investments onsoftware licensing,
subscriptions, cloud investmentswithin the Microsoft ecosystem.

Now, in coming out of Microsoft and founding
the company thirteen years ago,why did you start ampiO?

Well, there's two reasons. I'll tell you the first
reason, the funnier reason,which is after I left Microsoft,
I kind of didn't know what Iwanted to do. And all the job
offers that I received involveda lot of travel. So I was like,
I'm not sure I want to do that.But really the true reason, the

(04:06):
reason specifically for us beingand starting a solution
provider, a services company, isin all fairness, at seventeen
years at Microsoft, I lovedevery minute of it, minus a
couple of minutes here andthere, but that's just corporate
life, right?
I personally, and I think we ingeneral, as a Microsoft culture,

(04:30):
the majority of us did notreally experience the value that
our customers, that Microsoftcustomers received out of the
products. We were kind of knownand had this reputation of just
being engineers coming up withproducts and features and
designs sitting behind monitors.And then they push them out to

(04:52):
the public and then they move onand go make decisions about
future features, right? It's allgood. It's all great.
I believe in the value of theproducts we deliver, but you
kind of never experience thefruits of the labor, right? I
wanted to see how customers areusing this. How is it making
their life better? And how canwe as engineers go out in the

(05:13):
public sphere and say, oh, youcould also do this with this
product and make your life somuch better. And I think that's
what motivated me to go out andsay, I want to help customers
maximize the use of theseproducts to make their life
better, to be more productive,to just enjoy these products

(05:35):
versus do things that, we buildfeatures and we're like, nobody
knows who's using thesefeatures.
We actually, we had this thingcalled SQIM when I was at
Microsoft, we deployed it,nobody knew about it because it
ran behind the scenes and ittracked usage data from
Microsoft Office. And we wereable to track what features

(05:56):
people used and we learned, wehad it out for a year. The first
year we had it, it still exists,but the first year we had it
out, we realized Excelspecifically, people barely
click on five or six buttons inthat product. And it is one of
the most feature rich products,you know, back in the day at
least out there, but nobody usedthe additional features in

(06:19):
there. And I was like, I wantpeople to do that.

Now, what role do partnerships play in ampiO's
business model and growthstrategy?

Yeah, so, I mean, that's a good question because,
let me tell you the partnershipdeal. When I first started this,
I hailed from a non sales world,right? Like I was an engineer at
heart. I might be guilty ofstill writing some code today,

(06:48):
PowerShell and otherwise, whichis, let's not get into that
because that's not a good ideafor somebody trying to run a
business. But besides that,didn't know, I didn't know, and
the people that joined me whenwe first started ampiO, we
didn't know how to sell.
We just knew how to engineer.And that was difficult. Like
it's it's not for the faint ofheart to start a business, it's
tough. And we built partnershipsbased on relationships. A couple

(07:13):
of people that I used to workwith at Microsoft came to me and
said, hey, we heard you starteda company and I work for this
company.
So this is how the partnershipmodel evolved. And we became
very partner centric, verypartner driven. We started
focusing or we didn't focus, wedidn't put any more effort into
having direct clients. And welearned that, especially it's

(07:36):
very true today based on howMicrosoft is pushing us. We
learned that specialization isnot easy for small companies.
Like you can't have 10 engineerson staff and not have them be
generalists, because you'retracing revenue, right? You
don't want to say no tobusiness. So this is where our

(07:57):
partner model flourishes, whichis we go in and we tell our
partners, we will be yourspecialists in a very, very
specific area. Thus, we areaugmenting the portfolio of
services you provide. There arecertain services that you
historically could not providebecause you did not want to

(08:18):
invest in the resources or inthe time and effort to elevate
the skill set of theseresources.
And the answer is, you don'thave to shy away from providing
that. We will fill the gap. Wewill come in as you to fill that
specialty need, specialty gap.And the reason I say Microsoft
is sending us that way for thosepartners that are out there that

(08:39):
have lived through this wholereimagining of the partner
program, they all know thatMicrosoft wants specialists.
They're not interested ingeneralists anymore.
They're not interested in thecomplexity of the technology
does not allow for yourtraditional systems
administrator that can doexchange and AD and BizTalk and

(09:04):
SQL. No, they want a very, very,very focused specialist. That's
why they call it specializationin the partner program.

Now, it's kind of taking it like now. When did
you join IAMCP?

I'm not sure I wanna give away my age.

Joe, it doesn't matter. You're still, you know,
still a good looking guy, Joe.It doesn't matter how old you
are.

I think that's a better question for Rudy than
me. I wanna say 2016.

Okay.

It must have been 2016 or 2017. 2016, I think, or
maybe a year before. I've been amember for a little over ten
years, nine to ten years forsure.

Okay. So it was shortly after you had started
your business. And this is thereason why I asked that is then
is because, you know, being asa, you know, as a company that
sells and works, you know, withMicrosoft partners. How has
being a member of IAMCP helpedyou in building your partner
program?

So I think it goes back to that specialization
conversation. I thinkoriginally, I think the first
couple of years I was an IAMCPmember, I sort of questioned it
simply because I was like, oh,I'm just networking, but a lot
of these partners kind ofcompete with me and why am I
talking to them? I don't want togive away the sauce and I don't

(10:23):
want to tell them anything aboutme. But as that partner model
evolved, I've learned that IAMCPis actually a very, very
critical organization for ourbusiness. Why?
Because we are specialized. Ineed trusted partners within
that organization that I canhand customers over to. Trusted,

(10:45):
right? I trust theseorganization members to just
give them my customer or givethem my partner and say, you
talk to them about Dynamics. Iknow that I could trust you to
do both a good job and thatyou're not going to encroach on
my business, right?
And they're all specialized,right? We still compete. I mean,

(11:07):
this is not to suggest that wedon't compete, but competition
is good and healthy. But we alsofill gaps for each other. And
that is very important.

So can you share an example of a successful
partnership you've establishedand like what made it work?
Because I know you've gotseveral.

Oh, I can share.

And you don't have to give the name of the
partner or the customer either.And if you just want to-

Oh, yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, sure. I
mean, I can share. I can thinkof one right off the top of my
head right now, a coupleactually, but the first one I
can remember is we have apartner that's not part of
IAMCP, obviously we're partnerdriven. And we went in and did a
huge Azure migration for them.
And we found out that they haveDynamics. And the partner was

(11:55):
like, Joe, we need you tomigrate their Dynamics instances
and infrastructure. I was like,we don't do that. We know
nothing about Dynamics. And thepartner was like, well, I don't
either. He goes, I don't wantthem to go shop it around. That
wouldn't do us any good. Like, Iwant to keep them within my
purview. So I reached out to acouple of IAMCP partners that do

(12:18):
Dynamics. And I talked to themabout it and they're like, we'll
take it over.
I introduced the IAMCP partner,the Dynamics partner, to my
partner that's not part ofIAMCP. They ran with it. I
completely disconnected from itbecause I don't want to have
anything, we don't want to haveanything to do with Dynamics.
Not because it's bad, but it'sjust, we don't have these

(12:39):
skillset, we don't have thecapacity. And tell you what, the
non-IAMCP partner that who cameto us with the customer, they
just came back and I think theythank me every other time I see
them. They're like, man, thispartner knocked it out of the
park. They moved Dynamics overto Business Central. And I mean,

(12:59):
it was like a win-win, win-winsituation.
And the beauty of that is thatthat partner, that Dynamics
partner is located in SoCal, hassent us a bunch of work because
in this organization,reciprocity is very important
and we all live and die by it.We reciprocate, and that's the

(13:23):
beauty of this organization.

Mhmm. Mhmm. So you've talked about this a
couple of times where you're youknow, you've got your
specializations areas that, youknow, you guys are best in class
in. You're also the part of itwith a community where there is
gonna be some competition.There's a value then with
partnerships.
How do you navigate all that tojust to to make it work? Make it

(13:47):
work both for ampiO, make itwork for the customer, make it
work for the partner, and kindof balancing all that out? What
what what do you see is is iskey?

Look, to me, and maybe this is personal, but
maybe it's just the culture ofampiO, but to me, emotional
intelligence is of the utmostimportance, right? Like when I
go and I'm hanging out withindividuals at the IAMCP
meetings that compete with me,I'm good. It's like being across
the net from your opponent. Andhey, if he gets a better shot

(14:19):
and it's a winner, then I'm justgoing to give him a thumbs up.
It's a good shot.
Like, what am I complainingabout? So I don't have a problem
with the competition piecewithin IAMCP. And really, I
could not be more proud of themembers of this organization

(14:39):
because they're all mature andprofessional and emotionally
intelligent. And so they do thesame, right? If we're competing
against the same goal, samecustomer, and they're like, yep,
they went with you because youprovided them A, B and C, good
for you, I'm going to learn fromyou, right?
But in all fairness, to be fairtoo, you'd be surprised that we

(15:02):
don't run into that often atall. Like it's a huge
marketplace. It's a hugemarketplace. And while I know
that we talk a lot about howmany Microsoft partners are out
there, believe me when I tellyou that the ratio is not
sufficient. Like I guarantee youthe market could probably

(15:23):
accommodate more partnersbecause it's a huge marketplace.
So we've literally never runinto a competitive situation
with an IAMCP partner ever,where we were in at the same
customer and we're like, uh-oh,Rudy's competing with me. That's
never happened.

Well, if Rudy's competing with you, it's kinda,
I don't know. Are you gettinginto marketing, Joe? What's
going on here?

I'm not sure I wanna get into that.

That's fair.

I'm gonna leave it up to you guys to do that.

Yeah. Because I I I know we're not getting into,
you know, with SharePoint andall the other many security and
all the many things you'redoing. So, no. That's fantastic.
Rudy?

Rudy Rodriguez (16:11):
Well, you know, since you bring up our our
competition, Joe, there's athere's a there's a lot of
things that, you know, inselling through partners, it's a
complex environment. It's acomplex environment. You're
dealing with people andbusinesses and such. So what
strategies have you found to bemost effective when selling
through partners?

You know, in all fairness, Rudy, I don't know if
that's probably one of ourAchilles' heels is that we go in
with no strategy sometimes. Wego in and go, man, I hope they
like me, right? But in allfairness, the selling through
partners is all about trust, isall about the relationship. And

(16:52):
I'm telling you, and this isnot, again, we've never run into
this with IAMCP, but the otherpartners that we sell through,
as painful as it was, especiallyfor somebody that is responsible
for revenue, right? We have hadto walk away from partners
before because there's no trust,they don't share our values,

(17:15):
they don't share our, you know,nothing that we do.
There's nothing in common. It'sa relationship, right? It's a
marriage for lack of a betterterm. And this is the advantage
of IAMCP, is that for you to bea member of this organization,
you either live and die by thevalues or you ship out. And

(17:37):
Rudy, I know you probably wereinvolved in this because I
remember this a couple of yearsago.
We had a situation where one ofthe partners was involved in
some really unethicalactivities. And guess what? They
were shipped out. This is thebeauty of this organization. We
don't want these types partners.

(17:58):
So the reason I say it's nostrategy, it's because it really
isn't a strategy. Our corevalues at ampiO match the core
values of the IAMCPorganization, and that in itself
is a strategy in my opinion.

Okay. You brought up something in my
memory. I remember thatincident. So excommunication of
a partner is really tough thingto do. And, but you do it
because it brings up the thepoint that you brought about,
relationship and trust. So Iknow I've known you for a long

(18:35):
time, and so I know you know howto do this. But how do you coach
your people and how do you talkwith other partners to foster
the trust and collaborationthat's necessary to secure the
business and to maintain a longterm relationship with those
partners?

Yeah. So values, I don't wanna beat up on that,
but values are important. I beatthat drum all day long. But
there's another thing I'velearned over the years that is
also kind of pertinent, which isit can't be always about the
money. It can't.

(19:12):
Because, especially through apartner model, right? Because
when you're going through apartner, you have to make
concessions for everybody to beprofitable. You have to, you
can't, I mean, I don't thinkit's a secret if I tell you
this. I mean, it's a businessmodel, right? When you go
through a partner, you have todiscount your pricing because

(19:33):
the partner has to also realizesome revenue, right?
There's something calledmargins. And we have won huge
deals by, what's the term I'mlooking for here, by making
concessions on earlier dealswith the same customer that
generated almost no revenue. Butguess what? You deliver your

(19:58):
value by letting your partnerknow that it can't just be about
the money. It has to be aboutthe long term meaningful
relationship.
And if you're going to dig yourheels in and say, "Oh no, I
better make X amount of dollarson this job." Guess what? We're
all in the business of makingmoney at the end of the day,

(20:20):
right? The partner might startlooking for somebody else
that'll provide these servicesat a lower cost. So I'm in a
situation right now with a verylong term partner that just came
up to us and said, we need totalk about margins because
they're a huge partner,corporate policy came down from
the top. The team that we workwith at this partner doesn't

(20:42):
have control over thesedecisions.
And they just came up to us andsaid, Joe, we want to continue
this partnership, but we have totalk about margins because a
decision came down from the topthat we have to improve upon
those. And you know what? I'mmore than happy to talk about
those. So what's that term? Whatis it?

(21:07):
Pound foolish and penny wise?

Yeah.

Yeah. Pennywise, pound foolish.

Pennywise, pound foolish. Like, that's definitely
not what we wanna be.

That's always a hard conversation, isn't it, in
the concessions that you make?But margin pressures are hitting
everyone right now. So that'sone of the challenges. So this
leads to this next question,because each partner is
different that you work with.And then how do you and your
team ensure that the alignmentbetween your sales goals and

(21:39):
those of your partners are goodtogether?
Do you have a very directconversation with them when you
first establish a relationshipor is it an ongoing type of
conversation with thosepartners?

Well, that's why we have a Dynamics Marketing.
Because we really didn't do agood job at that for the longest
time. But let me did I just wasthat a plug for Danemis
marketing? I think it was. Look,in all honesty, we don't know
how to do that.
We're not good at that. That'swhy we need to hire, I know

(22:14):
we're laughing about it, butit's the honest truth, right?
Like that's why we need somebodylike Dunamis to come in and say,
Hey, you got to think aboutsomething other than resizing
their VM in Azure or building aPower App for their SharePoint.
You got to think about thealignment. You got to think
about how are you going tomarket with these partners and
how are you aligning with themto augment their portfolio, to

(22:39):
enable their salespeople andtheir workforce to evangelize
your services?
We honestly don't know how to dothat internally. And again,
that's where we come in andsolicit the help of other IAMCP
partners that do this well, andwe partner with them and
collaborate with them to helpeach other.

So can you share with us, I know you've shared
one story on big success thatled to a breakthrough, but have
you had any success storieswhere you've had unexpected
collaboration that led to asignificant breakthrough with a
customer and with that partner?

Oh, man. I have so many that I can't even can't
even think of. Unexpected. Whatwhat do you what do you mean by
unexpected?

Well, somebody just surprised you and said,
hey. You know, like you talkedabout that one where you went
and got a Dynamics partner tocome in and help you with a
particular project. Have you hadany others like that that could
actually be bigger?

Yeah. I mean, we had one in Houston a while back
where actually it was aconnection from an IAMCP
partner, right? It wascompletely unexpected. And they
just said, Oh, ampiO, we hadn'tdone any, we hadn't collaborated
or done any business with thatIAMCP partner. We're just

(24:02):
members of the sameorganization, that's it. We go
to meetings together, we doevents together. And that person
referred us to one of herpartners or to a partner that
has a client. And I'm like, Ijust looked at the email. I was

(24:23):
like, who's she referring me to?Like what, did she send the
email to the wrong person?
And that turned out to beliterally a year and a half
engagement. That was completelyunexpected. Just out of left
field, you're like, wow. Butguess what? That was really in
my opinion, we had never donebusiness without an IAMCP
partner before, but I think thatwas a byproduct of the fact

(24:46):
that, again, we trust eachother.
We know that if you're in thisorganization, that I could call
you out if you do a bad job formy client or for my partner, and
we only want the best of thebest of this organization.

That's great. And to your point a little bit
earlier, I've been around in theIAMCP since 1995, Joe, before it
was even called the IAMCP. Itwas the National

You were eight, right? You were eight years old
at the time?

Three. Three years old at the time. Three
years old. But but I was, fairlycomputer literate at that time,
so that helped an awful lot.
Anthony, I'll turn it over toyou. Do you have some more
questions?

Oh, yeah. No. This oh, yeah. This has
definitely triggered a lot ofsome thoughts and questions.
Joe, one thing is, you know,have there been any moments,
right, in your career, that, youknow, just in the last I
shouldn't say career, but in thelast, you know, the with the
since you founded the company orjust over that journey that has

(25:44):
reshaped your approach topartnerships?

Man, the moments are daily for me. And and more
than and and sometimes twice onweekends too. Yeah, you know,
Anthony, if there's a learninglesson here from, and when I
talk about partnerships, I'm notnecessarily talking about IAMCP
partnerships, I'm talking aboutpartnerships in general. There

(26:11):
are times, as painful as it is,and it took me years to learn
that, maybe because I'm a slowlearner, maybe because I'm
stubborn, I don't know, butthere are times you have to
agree with yourself that thispartnership is not the right
partnership. Those are the mostdifficult in my opinion, right?

(26:33):
It's very difficult. And this isnot specific, this is actually
in line with what I just talkedabout a few minutes ago and Rudy
remembering the incident, right?Like it happened to us with
IAMCP. It's a partner that hasbeen around for a very long
time. And I think it was a verydifficult decision for the board
to investigate the matter or thematter and then go back and say,

(26:54):
you know what, we must partways. And I've learned that the
difficult way, well, not thedifficult way, the slow way,
because I refuse to acknowledgeit, I guess. Breakups are hard,
right?
It's always hard to break up,especially when you're
generating revenue from thatpartner or from that customer.
But sometimes you're not readingbetween the lines that that

(27:15):
revenue is cost is notprofitable, right? That was one
of my moments where we had acouple of partners in the past
where they were generatingungodly amount of revenue for
us. But when you go dig underthe hood, you realize that the
profitability is almost zero, ifnot negative.
And that's one of the, that tome, that is a huge moment that

(27:41):
happened a couple of years agowhere I'm like, man, you got to
cut that umbilical cord and justmove on. You cannot continue to
nurture a relationship that'sgoing nowhere. And let me make
sure I say, is not a I'm notsuggesting that it's because
it's a bad partner or it's a badcustomer. It's not what I'm

(28:04):
saying. What I'm saying isbecause sometimes there are just
no synergies, right?
Yeah. You can't have relation,like sometimes two people just
don't gel, right? There's nosynergy. So guess what? Doesn't
mean one is bad. It just meansthat there's just no synergy and
you have to accept the fact thatyou must move on.

Yeah, yeah. So to kind of piggyback on that
then, if you had to pick justone piece of advice, I mean, I
know you probably have got alot, but I'm gonna ask just for
one for fostering lasting andproductive partnerships, what
would it be?

Honesty. There is nothing- We've lost deals
because we were honest and I'mhappy we did. And let me tell
you what I mean. I'd hate tomake it sound like I ran this
through, lying through my teethat the beginning, but in all
fairness, when you're trying togrow up, when you start a
business and you're strugglingfor revenue and you're desperate
for revenue, you start makingpromises that you can't keep.

(29:02):
That to me is dishonest.
And guess what? I've been guiltyof that, right? I've been guilty
of saying, oh yeah, yeah, we dothis. Yeah, yeah, because I just
don't want to say no because I'mdesperate for the revenue. We're
desperate. We need to makepayroll, right? And then I
learned over the years that man,that puts you in a worse
situation, that costs you morethan you make, right? So be

(29:23):
honest about your strength, behonest about your weaknesses,
and that's where partnershipscome in.

That's good. That's good. Now, you know,
talking about like, you know,with the strengths and honesty
and building, you know, goodsolid partnerships, how does
ampiO support its partners, inbuilding skills and resources
that they need to succeed?

So, you know, we try to make and this is a very,
like slippery slope for us,because we only make money when
we build. We're almost like Ihad a client one time accused me
of being, they said, you guysare like lawyers. I'm like,
well, you're kind of right. Webuild you as we work. I'm not
sure I can argue with that.
But we try to do our best. And Itry to instill in all of our

(30:12):
engineers, the specializedengineers that are really the
best of the best, in my opinionat least. We have an MVP on
staff, we're all certified.Anyway, the bottom line is that
I try to instill with them theabove and beyond mentality,
which is I understand that yourcompensation is directly tied to

(30:34):
your utilization, but goingabove and beyond for a customer
sometimes or a partner thatdoesn't contribute to your
utilization, that doesn'tnecessarily contribute to your
pocket immediately, is a longterm investment that the
dividends are, they cannot bemeasured, but there are

(30:57):
dividends, right? So that's howwe try to support our partners,
which is not to The example Iwould give you, I'm gonna give
you a very simple example.
We write a statement of work,everybody knows how this works.
It's not a secret. You write astatement of work, you put in as
many inclusions as you can, youcreate as many exclusions as you
can, and you go to yourengineering team and you say,

(31:17):
stick to the scope, right?Because scope creep means we
lose money. Well, you say thatenough and it becomes almost
like a dictatorship on the SOW,right?
Like, no, if they ask you aquestion, you'd go, I'm not
gonna answer that question. It'snot in the inclusions. So we had
to kind of shift that mentalitya little bit and say, if it's

(31:39):
not in the inclusions and it'snot taking that much time, go
above and beyond for thepartner, for the customer. If
you do it for the customer,you're doing it for the partner.
If you're doing it for thepartner, it translates to the
customer.
I'm not suggesting that you goand spend twelve days doing
something that's out of scope,but a little goes a long way,

(31:59):
right? Yeah. So that's somethingthat's very important that I
have to instill in myengineering team.

Well, outside of just being, you know, best in
class on the technical side,right, and then having your
engineers going above and beyondon the technical, there's
actually you know, when you havethese relationship with your
partners, it's kind ofpiggybacking on that going above
and beyond.

Oh, yeah.

Things like training, providing marketing
resources, and co branding,whatever, you know, could be any
or all, you know, that you playin helping in that enabling your
partners for for their successbecause that's, you know, at the
core, that's what you know,being a, you know, as a best in
class, you know, you know,micros you know, you know,
Microsoft shop with all thesespecializations, you're helping

(32:43):
them be successful, you know, inreaching more, you know,
customers and delivering highvalue. So outside of the
technical with things liketraining, marketing, etcetera,
what are some things that youguys are doing?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, investing in the
tools, and when I say tools,that could be marketing,
branding, that could be trainingrep. You have to invest, you
have to put time and effort intoyour partners. You have to
deliver. We deliver for ourpartners or we used to at least,

(33:17):
and we still try to do it.
The problem is that, well, it'snot a problem, but you know,
there's a lot going on, but weneed to get back to it more. We
used to do quarterly visits toour partners and educate their
sellers, sit there and have anopen, what we like to call a
brown bag. We bring lunch and wechitchat about the market and we
talk to them, educate them aboutwhat's hot out there and how

(33:38):
they could go sell it and howthey could go help their
customers leverage thesetechnologies, right? So we
invested in that, that'sinvestment, that's time. We
invest in building collateralfor our partners to go out and
deliver it to their customers.
We call it like enablementbattle cards, right? We call
that battle cards. Give themthat. You can't expect our

(34:00):
partners to know every singlenew product or new functionality
that Microsoft releases, right?And then the other thing I would
say is invest in their businessprocess also.
When I say invest in theirbusiness process, when you work
with big partners, they haveminutiae. Any big company's got

(34:22):
internal processes that what Iwould like to call as a bit of
minutiae, right? Like strictrules and strict this and strict
that. The example I would giveyou, we have a partner, a very
big partner. They've only been apartner for a year, but we're
starting to see some seriousrevenue come through them.
And their solution architectsare in despair because every

(34:45):
time we send them an SOW fromAmpio to the partner, it takes
them hours to move it over totheir SOW, right? So the SAs are
like really struggling. They'relike, well, I have other SOWs to
work on. So guess what? Weinvested in building automation
so that when we write the SOWwith a push of a button, it

(35:09):
injects itself into their SOW.So the SAs now, instead of
spending an hour or two or threecopying and pasting our language
into their SOW, they push abutton and it goes over there.
Well, that was an investment onour part. We had a developer
work on it for two weeks usingthe Power Platform. But guess
what? Now the partner is gonnago, the essays at the partner

(35:32):
are gonna go, hey, we only wantampiO SOWs to come our way
because whichever one, right?That's an investment. That's
what you do.

That's fantastic. Well, also too is,
you know, I know, I mean, ampiOinvests also heavily in
providing know, monthly partnereducation, you know, webinars.
And so for those that arelistening, you just go on, you
know, ampiO's LinkedIn page.You'll see they're there. You
know, we'll you know,constantly, you know, for those

(36:03):
that are either current partnersor looking at, you know, you
know, as a partnership.
I mean, I know, like, thisquarter, doing a lot on, you
know, some of the differentAzure technologies. I think next
quarter, you know, has a bigfocus on the different security,
you know, technologies. So inaddition to those webinars,
there's, you know, the battlecards, there's the guides,
there's a lot of information youguys are providing. It's it's

(36:25):
pretty, pretty impressive.Question is because I know as
you're making that investment,like, you know, you know, like,
you know, the webinars, theguides, etcetera, what was it
for you, you know, as anestablished company to say, you
know what?
We need to do more to invest inour in our partners. Because I
think it'd be good advice forthose that are and the reason

(36:47):
why I asked that is for thosethat are, you know, that, you
know, are either looking topartner or build out, you know,
their partner channel. It'd begood to hear from, you know, you
know, an experienced, you know,business owner like yourself why
you made that shift.

Oh, that that's an easy one. I'll tell you why.
Because that's really easy.Because historically, we counted
on our skillset and good looksto get business, right? And
being reactive gets you nowhere,literally.
So I'll tell you this, right? Sowe had a partner in 2022, they

(37:24):
brought us 50% of our revenueand they were coming to us like
it's nobody's business. We'relike, we almost wanted to say to
them, please stop, we can't keepup. Then in 2023, they fell off
the face of the earthcompletely, just disappeared. It
was like so stressful.
I'm like, what happened? Whatdid we do wrong? Well, what we

(37:46):
did wrong was we didn't investin the partner. We were just
waiting, sitting here, waitingfor them to call us, waiting for
handouts, right? That is not arecipe for success.
You have to stay in front ofthem. You have to, like I said,
enable them. You have to beproactive in providing whatever

(38:09):
it is you believe you shouldprovide, whether it's, like we
said, battle cards, lunch andlearns, you have to be
proactive. And that was thething that was kind of like a
lightning bulb. It was like,man, we can't just sit here and
wait for them.
What we learned is that the onlyreason we were making money hand
over fist with them is justbecause it happened to be like a

(38:32):
renewal cycle, right? And thenthe renewal cycle goes away for
a couple of years. They weren'tgonna come back to us because
they were like, well, I don'tknow what to tell my customers
about Microsoft. They're theones who are telling me. And I'm
like, oh yeah, no, that's notgonna work out. We have to be
evangelists.

Yeah. Now at this, are you seeing any kind of
like emerging trends, thingsthat you're seeing in the world
of like, you know, partnershipsand channel sales that, you
know, either excite and orchallenge you?

You know, I don't know that it's any different.
Here's what I'm seeing. I thinkwhat I'm seeing in all fairness,
which is good for us, I'm happyfor it, or I'm happy about it.
I'm starting to see companiesand partners accept the fact
because I think they struggledwith that. And what's the word

(39:27):
I'm looking for here?
And kind of wanted to keep it atarm's length for the longest
time. They're now accepting thefact that specialization
requires partnerships. Nobodycan be jack of all trades and be
successful. The technologies arebecoming extremely complicated.
And unless you're Accenture orAvanade, where you have the

(39:54):
means to hire these resourcesthat are specialized, unless
you're one of these big guys,you have to partner, you have
to.
I get asked the question all thetime, which is why internally, I
think a lot of team membersinternally ask me the question,
why don't we just do dynamics?We can make money hand over

(40:16):
fist. I'm like, because youdon't understand how much it
costs to become a dynamicspartner. Do you understand the
cost of the resources and thecost of the training? Why would
we do that? Just go to a partnerthat specializes in it.

I've got, so I've got, two more questions,
before I do, Rudy, you wannajump in with anything?

Joe, you reminded me of a thing that goes
back many, many years. But, youknow, just changing the the
conversation, the salesconversation with your own team
of what it takes to build a newspecialization and build a new
practice and how much thatcosts. Because that reminded me

(41:00):
of when I was running my ownbusiness there and my team came
to, We need to do this. And weused to, you know, my team used
to complain about it. So, allright, first question I'm gonna
ask you, is it in our businessplan?
And if it, you know, you had toanswer the question correctly
before we moved on to the nextquestion. And then it was, if

(41:24):
not, why not? Why isn't it inour business plan? Do we have
the resources to do this? Andwhat are the consequences of not
doing this?
And you just reminded me, and itwas always a funny situation
when people would come in, Weneed to do this. And then as
soon as I'd ask them those fourquestions, they'd get up and

(41:45):
walk out because it's a realchallenge. He says, when you're
sitting in this seat, you haveto understand what it takes
because people would bring yousupposed opportunities that
could cost you a million dollarsto undertake. And as a small
business, you can't do that. SoI think it's very important for

(42:06):
people to consider that.
So I really appreciate whatyou've done in the area of
partner development becausepartner development, developing
your own partner teams as wellas your team understanding what
it takes in in adopting abusiness model that that uses

(42:27):
other partners to help yousecure business. That's really
important for partners to knowtoday.

Yeah. I always compare it to extending credit.
You're extending credit one partof the business is trying to
extend credit to another part ofa business that doesn't exist.
You're building a new business.And I'm like, small businesses
can't just extend credit, right?
A small business can't justallocate $2,300,000 to building

(42:56):
a Dynamics practice, right?That's easier said than done. So
yeah, I fully agree with whatyou're saying. Is it in the
business plan? Because if it'snot in the business plan, that
means I put zero financialthought into it.

Well, and it's a strategy all business owners
have to go through to reallyunderstand. And the way
technology moves, especiallybeing involved in the Microsoft
program for a long time,Microsoft does these shifts, and
every time they do these shiftsas a Microsoft partner, you have
to understand what it's going totake to to undertake it. And a

(43:33):
good example today is Copilot.And what do you do with Copilot?
Because, just going out andselling licenses does not make
your customers more productive.
Right?

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. Yeah.

Mhmm. So I've got just a couple, questions,
and these these would be pretty,pretty easy. You know, what has
been the most rewarding part ofworking in partnerships for you
personally?

Oh, relationships. Just build
relationships with great people.Really, we we I think we are
blessed to be in this industrybecause obviously I know nothing
about other industries, but inour technology industry, we're
just blessed. It's good people.The relationships have been

(44:20):
phenomenal. I'm so glad andgrateful for the relationships I
have built since I started thiscompany. Before that, remember I
told you I just hid behind mymonitor at my office at
Microsoft. I mean, obviously Ihad relationships, but with my
coworkers, not with anybodyelse. Today I I amaze myself

(44:42):
sometimes at the amount ofrelationships I've built
nationwide and globally, right,being part of this organization.
It's been truly rewarding.

Nice, nice. And last one questions. If you know,
if someone were just startingout in building like a partner
program, like for theirbusiness, what advice would you
give them?

Yikes. Don't do what I did at first. That's a
great first point.

Well, I know I know we had points like, you
know, you've already hit onlike, say, you know, obviously
be honest, right? So Iunderstand as that's kind of a,
you know, obviously a baseline.But anything else?

I mean, yeah, the partnership thing, you know, to
me, a lot of it has to do withlikability also. I'd hate to say
this because I know it sounds alittle shallow, but you have to
be likable too, because partnershave options. We're not the only
rodeo in town. Sure, we'll talkabout our differentiation and

(45:51):
how we do this. And I have anengineer that does that.
And they are the strongest andthe best and the tallest and
they can dunk and blah blah, youknow, fine, all that's good,
right? But you have to belikable, right? You have to be
an honest likable person, firstof all. There's another one that

(46:13):
I think is very, very critical.And I think that differentiates
us. That's why most of ourpartners never leave us. You
have to be easy to work with.

You have to be dynamic. Meaning you can't dig
your heels in when it comes toprocesses, especially when
you're working with biggerpartners that have had legacy
processes forever and a day andsay, Nope, we do it that way.
And that's the only way we doit. Because the partner will go,
Okay, well, I'm gonna have tofind a partner that's willing to

(46:45):
do it a little bit closer to myway. And you have to be easy to
work with.

And that partners gravitate towards that because
they're like oh yeah, I justwant easy, man. I want the easy
button.

Mhmm. Well, it's really and that that
doesn't surprise me that youthat you share that because, you
know, you made one of thepoints. A lot of those come back
to, you know, having the highEQ. Right?

Yeah.

I mean, most of these guys we know are gonna
have, you know, high IQ coupledwith being technical, but
balance that out with the highEQ makes it a pretty powerful
combination. So I appreciate yousharing that. Well, Joe, this
has been fun. Really appreciateyou coming on. What's kind of
like the the best way, you know,for folks listening, how to

(47:33):
connect with you?

I'm on LinkedIn, you go to our website. I mean,
we're very public. We're easy toconnect with, reach out to me,
I'm very accessible. I'll talkto customers and partners and
anybody at any time. Again, Ilove relationships, I love
building relationships.

(47:55):
So yeah, I mean, you could findme on LinkedIn. I know that Rudy
accuses me of doctoring up mypicture up there, but that's not
true. And then, yeah, if you goto www.ampiosolutions.com, you
can contact us. If you go to theabout us, my bio's up there and

(48:15):
you could click on and connectwith me from our website. My
email is public. I just love toconnect with people.

And I'll put all those links. All those links
will be in the show notes aswell for those that are
listening. Well, Joe, thank youonce again. You have a great
rest of the day.

I appreciate you all. Have a great day. Bye bye.

Take care.

Well, that was a great episode. I really enjoy
speaking with Joe. He's, alwayslearned something. I always feel
like he has a lot of greatinsights.

Yes. He does. We didn't touch on the one thing
that we brought up before theinterview, and I I will preclude
from including it here. But ifyou can text me, I'll tell you
what I was going to say aboutJoe since he brings up my age at
every single chance he gets.

He does. He does like giving you a hard
time. That aside, you know, it'sinteresting. The thing that,
there's several things thatreally stood out to me, and what
I really appreciate, you know,it's funny that, you know, you
mentioned that because, youknow, obviously, you know, Joe,
you know, his company, you know,very technical, doing a lot of

(49:25):
high you know, highly verytechnical work, you know, for
partners, but how just theemphasis and the importance on
the human side in beingpersonable, just the emphasis on
EQ, being honest, likable, beingeasy to work with, and just the
importance of just being dynamicand responsive, you know, as
keys to success as as they'vebeen, you know, doing this

(49:47):
successfully now for, you know,for over thirteen years. And so
it's funny that, you know, thatpart would you know, he would
emphasize that, but that thatpart would come out, you know,
as you're talking.

Yeah. And and I've worked with Joe, for quite
a while and especially on theIAMCP board in Dallas since, I
nominated him to be president ofIAMCP Dallas and working with
him. And I've had the pleasureof working with him. And the one
thing that I that I learned inthis interview is not only is he
personable and likable, but theamount that he's very

(50:21):
knowledgeable about how to workwith and through partners and
the investment of time intopartner development is really
important to his organization.And I especially appreciated the
story about how he wants tolearn more about the partner's
business processes and how hecan make their jobs a little bit
easier.
So the story that he sharedabout the complex SOWs that

(50:46):
partners sometimes write and howhe invested time and effort for
one of his developers to build aprocess using the technology
that they implement to helpthem, help the SAU process work
so much easier for that partner.And in turn, that leads to more
business for them. Partnerdevelopment is really important

(51:08):
when you're working with andthrough partners.

Mhmm. And akin to that too just with, like,
some of the trends that they'reseeing just how, you know, that
companies are accepting the factthat, you know, the partner is a
partner that they needspecialization. And one of the
key ways in which they can kindafill those gaps, you know, to,
you know, to have thosetechnical specializations is

(51:31):
through partnerships. And thattruly, you know, together, you
know, you know, you're gonnawin. Right?
And, it's better together. Youknow, this is just yet another
example of that. So I thought itwas really great.

Absolutely. It was a great episode. So to all
of those who are listeningtoday, thank you for joining us
on this episode of IAMCPProfiles in Partnership powered
by Dunamis Marketing. We hopeyou enjoyed this podcast and
find it useful and inspiring. Ifyou did, please subscribe, rate,
and review us on your favoritepodcast platform.

(52:05):
One of the best ways to partnerfor success is to join IAMCP, a
community of Microsoft partnerswho help each other grow and
thrive. IAMCP members can findand connect with other partners
locally and globally and accessexclusive resources and
opportunities. Whether you'relooking for new customers, new
markets, or new solutions, IAMCPcan help you achieve your goals.

(52:30):
To learn more, visit the websiteat www.iamcp.org.

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