June 4, 2025 • 46 mins
This Week's Episode:
In this episode of Software Sales Simplified, hosts Kevin Donville and Matt Long welcome Tamer Osman, a seasoned expert in software partnerships. They discuss the critical role of partnerships in driving sales success, the evolution of Tamer's career, and the innovations shaping the software industry. Tamer shares insights on hyperscalers, the impact of AI and automation, and the importance of education in partnership strategies. The conversation emphasizes the need for commitment and collaboration within organizations to build effective partner programs.
About Our Guest - Tamer Osman:
Tamer Osman is a respected leader in the tech partnerships space with over 25 years of experience driving growth and innovation across enterprise software, cloud services, system integrators, and startups. He has built and scaled partner programs at major organizations including AWS, IBM, Salesforce, KPMG, and Infosys, contributing to five successful company exits. Known for his results-driven approach and ability to build trust with stakeholders, Tamer has managed strategic alliances generating over $1B in partner-influenced business and founded RGlobe, a collaborative selling SaaS platform adopted by Oracle. His career began during the dot-com boom, where he helped launch KPMG’s e-business division and held impactful roles with Cisco, Microsoft, and others.
Beyond tech, Tamer is passionate about social impact. He co-founded the Diablo Valley Tech Initiative (DVTI), partnering with local colleges and civic leaders to create tech career opportunities for underserved communities while promoting sustainability and economic inclusion in the San Francisco East Bay. A keynote speaker and global traveler, Tamer holds a B.S. and M.A. in Industrial Technology from Cal Poly and completed postgraduate studies in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Stanford. He believes in staying curious and giving back—because the more you give, the more you get.
How to Find out More About Tamer:
You can find Tamer's profile on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamerosman/
Chapters:00:00 Introduction
01:49 Tamer's Background
04:55 The Importance of Partnerships in Software Sales
06:45 Innovations and Disruptions
09:59 Building Successful Partner Programs
13:22 Fostering Collaboration Between Sales and Partners
16:04 Different Types of Partnerships
18:44 Driving Success
21:18 The Importance of Partnerships
23:22 Disruptions
24:21 AI and Automation
28:24 The Rise of Marketplaces
35:00 Building Successful Partner Programs
39:03 Common Pitfalls
40:57 Advice for Partner Managers
45:13 Goodbye
46:21 Subscribe!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome to Software Sales Simplified Move to Success, your
weekly stop for the latest and greatest on all of the insights,
trends and learnings that you need to in order to be a better
seller. Whether you are just starting
out or you're an old hand at selling, come and join us every
week here where we share our thoughts and the thoughts of our
(00:28):
guests. Matt Long and I are going to be
your Co host today and between the two of us we have over 50
years worth of experience selling software, running
software teams in the space of enterprise software sales.
Before we get started too deeply, Please remember to like,
follow, subscribe and leave comments on whatever channel and
platform it is that you're listening to.
(00:49):
Our episode really helps the show out.
My name is Kevin Donville and I'm going to be one of your
hosts today and the other host is going to be my partner or in
crime and all around best friend, Matt Long.
Matt, how you doing today, Sir? I'm doing great, Kevin.
Happy to be here for another week and another podcast.
Another week, another podcast. We had a bit of an unusual one
(01:10):
last week. We we went and announced our
education series. If you haven't had a chance to
check that one out, check out that episode as well as the
education video that we produced, which is the first in
our new series, which is all about what is a sales engineer.
And we're getting a lot of greatfeedback, but we'd like to know
your thoughts as well. That's on YouTube by the way.
We'll put those links right downin the description, so if you
(01:30):
don't know where to find it, if you don't know where our YouTube
channel is, just go ahead and take a look at the description.
There'll be a link to take you right there.
But today we have a guest with us, a gentleman who Matt and I
have both worked with in the past.
In fact, I think we have crossedpaths more than once over the
course of our professional careers.
And that is Tamara Osmond. So, Sir, how are you?
(01:51):
Good to see you here. Welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been too long.
Missed working with you guys. Love what you guys are doing and
happy to be a part of a little piece of it today and join you
guys. Little piece that we hope turns
into a big piece. I have always been fascinated
working with you. We've had a couple of really
(02:11):
creative, interesting and thought provoking meetings with
partners, customers, developers,technology partners and business
partners over the years. And it's always been a real
thrill for me to go into those meetings with you because I know
that they're going to be high value and they're going to be a
lot of fun. And that's the space that you
come from. You come to us with the
(02:33):
perspective of partnerships and what partnerships mean to the
software industry. So I know you, Matt knows you,
but our guests do not. Please take a moment, take the
floor and introduce yourself to everybody here and tell them a
little bit about what you do andwho do it with.
You know, you were talking aboutyour combined 50 years of
experience. I'm right about that point,
about 25 years in my career, launched it back in the.com boom
(02:56):
back in San Francisco, South of market, which is kind of where
it was all happening there. And I was fortunate to play
fairly pivotal role in the launch of KPMG Big 5 firm back
in the day and their e-business division.
I come in through an acquisitionof a web development studio that
they made and it was a pretty exciting run.com boom went to
bust and I had to kind of look around for my next gig.
(03:18):
And I end up getting into my first partnership role and it
was managing the West for the Cisco Systems strategic
partnership. Cisco at the time was
essentially the NVIDIA of the era andinthe.com area.
And so I was fortunate enough toget into that role.
Started to understand the the value of partnerships, strategic
partnerships, impact they make. Went on to managing strategic
(03:42):
alliances with Siebel Systems, Sun, two companies are now part
of Oracle. CA left, went to work for
another GSI was able to manage the Microsoft partnership there
for a bit and really All in all got got to touch, you know, over
a billion dollars in business that these partners were were
influencing and impacting and beable to work with some of these
(04:05):
really iconic CE OS. Early in my career that sparked
an idea for me to to launch my first startup and a company
called our globe. I started from this concept of
collaborative selling, and what I found in all these strategic
partnerships is you're mapping all these accounts to try to get
sales teams to work. Together so you could jointly
prospect and win more business. Well, there's a very tedious
(04:28):
exercise and so I was like, you know, just like these dating
sites out there, there's got to be a way to automate this
process a bit. And so I took this crazy journey
of building this cross company collaborative selling platform.
And so I did that for several years, built the software, ran
the company, unfortunately. We're a bit.
Ahead of our time, so you know ended up sort of sunsetting sold
(04:50):
parts of of that company and right about that time Ira
Pollock, who we all know very well running sales.
For for tea leaf. And he knew me back from the
KPMG days, reached out and said,hey, what are you doing?
You know a thing or two about partnerships, come over here and
run our partner program. So I was fortunate enough to to
come join Tea Leaf when you guyswere there, had another
(05:11):
opportunity at the same time. But it was there's no question
that that was the right one. And you guys know sort of from
there being acquired by IBMI, went on to work for a company
called Demandware, leader in thecommerce.
Space, Salesforce, AWS. And then back at IBM, so I'm
back at IBM now and running a part of our business around
(05:31):
building ecosystems on a hyper scalar partnership.
So AWS and and Microsoft and thetypes of partners that that are
are working with, with both of those companies as well as ours.
And how do we drive more software sales through these
business partners is really my focus today.
Safe to say I've touched a few different types of partnerships.
Understand the model of and and the models very well.
(05:55):
Whether you're on the services side or the software side or
hyperscaler side, what's relevant and, and whether you're
reselling or you're managed service provider or you're
embedding your technology into another technology for some
purpose. Whether you're a start up or
whether you're an enterprise Oregon, a medium sized company.
I've I've seen a bit of it all and seen what, what kind of
(06:17):
works and what doesn't for both the companies and for the people
involved, specifically sellers, right.
And how do they actually sell more in their roles and and
achieve or exceed their quotas? You mentioned hyperscaler a
couple times. Can you just talk about what
that means? Yeah, you know, I interestingly
have. I didn't really even hear the
word hyperscaler until I joined,or at least was considering
(06:39):
rejoining IBM. Hyperscalers are essentially the
three very fast growing public cloud.
Providers. So AWS being #1, Azure #2 and
Google or GCP being #3 and theseare companies for the most part
are referred to as hyper scalersbelieve for the most part based
(07:01):
on just the the hyper growth that they not only have have
shown themselves, but for companies that that decide to
leverage their infrastructure and their services to to rapidly
grow as well. So you're touching on something
that I think is one of the things I'm hoping that the
audience walks away with today. There's a lot of folks in the
software industry have been selling for years who don't
really completely understand or appreciate exactly everything
(07:25):
the partners group can be bringing to the table.
And as you just said, there's multiple different kinds of
roles that partners can have andthere's different types of
activities and supports they canprovide.
But I've always looked at the partner group when run properly
as a major innovation arm to sales and being able to be so
something that really moves the game of lives.
(07:46):
You just said a moment ago helping sell things faster in
your past history and you've hadsome amazing opportunities and
you've been exposed some amazingteams in the past.
What are some of the standout innovations or disruptions that
you've seen in the industry in the past?
How and what have they been and how they defined that career
that you've had? Yeah, yeah, at least on the
(08:08):
things or innovations or events that have defined my career.
There are some that definitely stand out, some of which have
nothing to do with partnerships at all and are moments where I'm
like, wow, that that definitely led to a big step forward in my
career. There are a couple where you're
like, oh, that kind of led to maybe a step back, some lessons
(08:31):
learned there. I think we we've all
experienced, I think it in, in my experience working.
With the Cisco partnership and. I mentioned I touched on Co
selling and mapping these accounts and I was probably the
youngest person in that role. I was fortunate to be in and
within the first year I was ableto exceed 175% of my quota
(08:54):
through an approach that I took to collaborative selling and
mapping. You know sellers across a large
set of accounts. In this case, the partnership
had had. Built out these joint solutions
and offerings that benefited both KPMG and Cisco and and so
it was up to us in the field to to capitalize on that strategic
(09:15):
partnership. And so through the methodology
that I took to mapping sellers around mutual accounts and
opportunities, I was able to to exceed my target and help a lot
of sellers do so themselves. I also touched on the startup
that I launched that was based on me understanding that there's
so much value if you can get theright people around a set of
(09:38):
target accounts focused on driving mutually beneficial
outcomes for the customers and for themselves as sellers, the
opportunity could be tremendous.Just so happened that I was
doing very manually. I literally spend like nights,
I'm like watching ATV show or Sports Center and I'm mapping
these accounts in preparation for the next day or.
For. You know, some, some strategic
(09:59):
planning that we're doing in a specific region or industry with
sellers. So this concept I had was around
if we could automate that, take the tediousness out of that
process and then and then. Figure out how you could rapidly
build. Trust between sellers too.
It's important that the sellers understand a with the value
proposition. What's the win win for both
companies. But then you know you need to be
(10:20):
able to trust this person like they're not gonna screw me in
this account, right? Like they're actually gonna.
Help me achieve my objectives and understand that I'm trying
to do the same. But we all have a respective
goals, so how? How do you do that?
And a lot of that comes down to trust and, and trusting the
person that that you're trying to partner with and of course,
trusting the company that you'reworking with.
Another big pivotal moment in mycareer was, you know, after we
(10:43):
were acquired by IBM as as tea leaf, right?
I built up a partner program. I I built up a program for
enabling partners, enabling partner sellers to be able to
sell our products, enabling partners to be able to deliver
professional services the way our professional services team
did at Tea Leaf, but to be able to really do that at scale.
We didn't really have the resources to roll out these
(11:06):
programs. So when we got acquired by IBM,
it was like all, all systems go launch these enablement programs
target partners that are complementary to what Tea Leap
provides and and can provide themarket at scale.
And so it was it was by figuringout who the right adjacent
partners are based on them partnering around other
(11:27):
complementary or adjacent products that IBM was already
selling and then enabling them at scale is what we did.
Within a very short amount of time, we were able to launch
these these programs. And as a result, we were able to
recruit over 100 partners that were certified to sell and
deliver service around tea leaf,which led to to massive growth
(11:48):
for the company post acquisition.
So for me, that was a really gratifying thing, to be able to
roll this thing out. Roll out a strategy that enables
to acquire new partners at scalewithin the IBM system and as a
result help our sellers make a lot of money and and the company
has a newly acquired company be very successful and I'd say the
last one. In more recent times, as part of
(12:11):
working for AWS for about four years, I launched this Product
Ambassador program when I was working with the Database
Services line within AW and. It was all about, similarly, how
do you enable business partners at scale?
We expect these business partners to influence our
business, help us sell our products.
But so often you bring in a business partner, they don't
(12:31):
really know exactly what to say or how to describe the product
or how to represent it effectively.
So I thought to myself, well, what if we trained our business
partners the same way we train our specialized sellers?
And how about we do that in a rapid way that we could validate
they're capable, that could alsoenable our sellers to know who
do they trust to bring into accounts and who do they
actually partner with. So I came up with this program,
(12:54):
built it out, launched it withinthree months, was able to get it
to market and get approvals fromlegal, get approvals from
branding for this program. And as a result was able to get
1000 plus sellers across 100 plus partners in 60 plus
countries to adopt this program,get certified and the impact on
sales is tremendous. And so the success of that
(13:17):
product program was then rolled out.
Across multiple other product service lines within AWS and so
that that that was really prettyawesome program that that stands
out for me. That's first of all music to my
ears and I understand just how Herculean a task that must have
been. I walked the Enablement Rd. more
than once and like you, I had Big 5, Big Six roots as well
(13:41):
because I started out at your competitor DNT.
So we were, you know, sometimes on opposite sides of those
equations. But I do appreciate how hard
that can be with respect to enabling that many people over
that short of a time frame to doit effectively.
I mean, you're pushing boundaries there and you're
definitely that is an innovativeapproach.
(14:03):
People don't necessarily think of the partner group as leading
that effort. But as a result, I mean, there's
just, it's just illustrative of just how to what degree sales
doesn't realize what they've gotpotentially with their pre sales
teams, right, apart from the presales teams, their partner
teams. So with respect to that, I mean,
(14:23):
you clearly found a niche, you executed that plan.
What are some of the things thatother organizations might want
to start looking at with respectto really making the most out of
the partnership between sales and the partner?
Group, I think when it comes to I, I think what you're getting
to is, is sort of a fostering ofminds of experimentation and
(14:44):
sales. Is that fair to say?
That's absolutely, absolutely fair.
Yeah, I, you know, I think with all the big ideas or times when
I've really felt like I've made an impact, it often comes down
to listening and working backwards from your customers,
from your fellow sellers, the sellers in the company, your
(15:04):
business partners, you know, understanding what's going to
make an impact. For them and coming up with some
hypotheses, right? Like if we were to do XY and Z,
would it move the needle in a big way?
Gather that data, pilot, you know.
A play or two and then just iterate.
And that's what I've seen in terms of what's worked for me in
(15:26):
terms of making a big impact or innovating and and
experimenting, experimenting effectively.
I would say also then for sellers who, who maybe aren't
working closely with business partners today is that they try
to align with one business partner, right?
A really well aligned business partner, a trusted seller and
try it out, right? Experiment and see where it goes
(15:48):
from there. And and once they see success,
just continue to repeat it with a similar approach.
I don't know, solid makes sense.Yeah.
I'm, I'm just curious. I mean, I've had some exposure
to working on the partner team way back in the day at
Introspect actually, Kevin, I worked on OEM, you know, kind of
system integrators and things like that.
(16:10):
What can you talk about the different aspects of
partnerships and which one do you focus on because there's
resellers or system integrators,there's technological, you know,
partners, there's OEM. Is there any particular area
that you focus on that you can talk about?
Yeah. And in my, in my experience,
I've worked with pretty much allof them, right.
So depending on whether you're aservices company or you're a
(16:33):
startup and or a hyper scaler for that matter, or if you're a
small or a medium business, an established company or again a
startup, it it totally varies. And.
For technology companies, what they're looking for is going to
be different than a services company right back in the day.
When I referred to my experienceat KPMG, we were the services
(16:53):
arm for these large software companies, Siebel Systems and
and many others, and So what they wanted was a trusted
advisor, a third party that could go in.
Encourage a customer to make a decision, the right decision,
and then ultimately they needed a partner that could implement
their software. And that's what customers needed
(17:14):
is a, someone they could trust to help them make a decision and
B someone who could actually help them implement the product
for the software company or the hardware company.
In case of of Cisco Systems, they need partners that can
advise customers and could, could implement their their
products and solutions. So it really just depends on on
where you are, on which side of the coin here and what motion
(17:37):
will help you grow your business, accelerate your
business through partnership. With respect to that now, I
mean, obviously you've worn a lot of different hats.
What is your team presently doing and how are they driving
success over at IBM today? Yeah, it's, it's interesting you
see businesses that are driving success with partnerships.
Many healthy partner programs are driving in excess of 25% of
the of the business's revenue. Yeah.
(17:59):
Average in the software space orin the in the tech space is is
50 plus percent and some companies are doing 80 plus but
when you think about demand where a company I was working
for almost all their. Business was going through a
business partner touching a business partner.
The services arm of the company was very light and they really
built their business around business partners.
Cisco Systems massive channel where 80 plus percent of their
(18:21):
business is going through a business partner in some way
shape or form so. Some companies really make this
a core part of their business and others are sort of
experimenting, but more and morebusinesses are getting into
partnerships and are making thata focal part of of their
business. And in my role at IBM and IBM
(18:44):
does a massive amount of business through business
partners. Really there's only, if you
think about it, there's only about 500 to 600 direct accounts
that IBM really focuses on. The rest of the accounts, some
80,000 or so, are intended to gothrough business partners, what
we call our select accounts. So IBM really relies heavily on
(19:08):
business partners and historically folks have looked
at partners as an indirect channel, but the reality is
actually that they can be your most direct channel possible.
And, and, and why do I say that?If you think about it, 84% of B
to B purchasing decisions start with a referral, right?
(19:29):
And most purchases in business to business come through some
sort of recommendation. And so your business partners,
they have these trusted relationships, right?
They've already done the hard. Work.
They are trusted by the end customer.
So if you could work with a business partner that has those
established relationships, you're getting warm
introductions, you're getting recommendations.
(19:51):
So it's, I think it's very important.
For companies and and sellers tounderstand that that dynamic,
Yeah, when I just something thatyou mentioned.
So you're at Tea Leaf with the IBM acquisition and you were at
Demandware when Salesforce acquired them, right?
Interestingly enough, I had leftDemandware before the
acquisition. I I did believe that that was a
(20:13):
potential acquisition play. You know, sort of interesting
note, I I took all my stock fromIBM and rolled it into
Demandware. And and when they got bought by
Salesforce that, that was an event that I was glad I actually
did and then had the foresight to do back then.
Interesting enough though, if you look, I mean, at that time
(20:35):
IBM stock didn't really move a whole lot, but in the last two
years it's gone up over 80%. I'd like to think I have
something to do with that, but obviously there's a lot of
things that are going on. Oh, you've.
Got the floor good, you know. IBM in the past, yeah.
I was going to say, you could bekind of the acquisition
whisperer. We just follow you around to see
what's going to be acquired next.
So that's probably not going to be IBM.
(20:57):
I'll say I wanted to circle backthough, just I've worked with
partner teams before and I thinkthe biggest hurdle I've always
seen was just getting momentum going in that partnership.
Because usually it's like, OK, we'll review accounts to sell.
It sounds great. There's a deck and then nothing
happens unless someone brings anopportunity in and actually
closes. Then people get excited again,
(21:18):
you know, sales people are right.
It's like, but for from your experience, what really gets a
successful program going? What are some of the motions or
activities or things that reallymake a partnership work?
Yeah. That's a great question.
You know, I think most sales people are still concerned that
that partnerships, you know willslow them down right there.
(21:39):
And I think that this is based on a lack of experience maybe
with with partners or a good partner or bad experience they
had or lack of past success. And there's a little secret that
the best sales people leverage partners as an integral part of
their sales strategy. When you think about to our days
with with Sam. And Gary and, and those guys,
(22:01):
you know, it's not like partnerswere all the, you know, in all
their deals, but it was, it was a key component to the way that
that they sold and, and how theydid business.
You know, interesting stats. Partner sourced opportunities
have an average of 30% higher win rates, 34 roughly percent
(22:27):
higher, higher contract value, 60% lower acquisition costs, two
to three times shorter sales cycles, and then the retention
rates are also higher. So the benefits are very clear
to partnerships, to both the businesses that that that have
successful partner ecosystems and partner programs, but then
(22:48):
also for the sellers that participate.
But that being said, it's critical you understand, you
know, why are you partnering, right?
Like what is the objective back to the type of business you are?
Are you an SI or services company, a startup, a
hyperscaler, a SAS company? You know, why are you, why are
you building partnerships or whyare you managing these types of
(23:10):
partners? And then the what the different
types of partners, which vary based on the type of company you
are. And then at what stage, you
know, are you a small software company like Tea Leaf and you
have one person managing the program?
Do you have other resources supporting that individual?
I mentioned once we were bought,we were able to do a whole lot
more because there were more resources focused on
(23:31):
partnerships. But one thing I did like about
Tea Leaf is at least there was acommitment, right, Like Ira had
a commitment to build a partner ecosystem, you know,
professional sales, our professional services was
dedicated to building a program.Our own partners marketing would
support building collateral and and building the messaging that
that could be taken to market with business partners.
(23:52):
So the key is that partnerships have a seat at the table.
It's an initiative that the companies bought into and that
you have the right resources invested in in ensuring that
it's a successful program and that, you know, not all, not all
partnerships are the same. Some partners and partnerships
will work out really well. Some people at partners will be
(24:12):
really well and effective to work at and others won't be
right. So I think you just have to have
an open mind, invest in the right partnerships, invest in
the right relationships and and you'll inevitably see some of
the results that successful partnerships and people who
engage in partnerships are able to derive.
That's a, that's a key point to bring up, right, Because right
(24:32):
now in our industry and there always seems to be going every
few years, there's like a cycle to this, pardon me, there's,
there's disruptions that are happening inside the marketplace
right now. What do you feel from your
perspective on the partner side of the house?
What do you feel are the biggestdisruptions that are happening
right now and and what can partners bring to the table to
(24:54):
help address and maybe mitigate some of those disruptions?
Yeah, I think it's a great question.
You know, obviously we're all seeing the impacts of AI, gender
of AI in particular automation is very big.
Arvind, our CEO talks very openly about how we're using AI
at IBM, how we're using automation.
(25:16):
We haven't had to let some people go as we're looking to
automate portions of our of our HR and, and various processes
and become more efficient as a company.
You know, there's, there's a lotof efficiencies that are being
created. And I think we're finding it in
use cases across all roles, across all industries.
You know, we're seeing it in sales.
(25:36):
And I think the most simple thing we're seeing, I think all
of us is, is automated note takers, right?
And the efficiencies that those are bringing.
I, I know there's a lot of AI automations occurring within
Salesforce in helping sellers prepare for calls or manage
opportunities. And so, you know, it's obvious
that AI and automation are impacting all of us in the tech
(26:00):
industry. We're feeling it.
Those are two big areas in termsof solution capabilities and
software solutions and platformsthat IBM is focused on, which I
think have contributed to our stock valuation over the past
couple years and our investmentsand acquisitions we've been
making there. I touched on some of the others,
you know, cloud, you know, hyperscalers, if you think about it,
(26:23):
these guys, you know, there's they, they've been growing so
fast and I think you can see thevaluations of of the hyper
scalers and and and. How their growth has worked out
for them, but. You know, interestingly enough,
these hyper scalers, as more, more companies are moving
workloads to these clouds, 52% of enterprises have workloads
(26:46):
that are in a public cloud, 7% are planning to move more
workloads in the next 12 months.So although that sounds maybe
like a large #52%. There's still a large number
that is not addressed yet, so that's still an opportunity for
these hyper scalers. But it's also plays directly
into IBM strategy focused on a hybrid cloud strategy.
(27:08):
There are just some workloads that aren't going to move right.
And so IBM's position itself, right sort of in the middle.
I like to use the reference of Switzerland in that they are
helping customers wherever they plan to run their workloads.
Do you plan to keep some of those workloads on Prem?
We got solutions for that. Are you planning on running some
of them in Azure, some in GCP and some on IWS?
(27:30):
We'll support you there, right. So you hear the reference to
meeting customers where they areat a lot at IBM and that's sort
of how we're, we're position ourselves to be a hybrid cloud
leader, if not the hybrid cloud leader and an AI leader.
And you see that in the partnership with AWS.
The reason why I'm here in 2022 strategic partnership was formed
(27:50):
with AWS around that concept. IBM is seeing customers of
theirs historically that they thought they can keep maybe on
their public cloud or private cloud.
Now moving to a WSIBM realized if we're not there, they may
leave us. So we need to make our software
available on AWS. And now IB Ms. got over 100
(28:11):
software listings that customerscan procure and provision easily
to some extent on AWS. That's another key disruptor
that I wanted to raise are marketplaces and marketplace.
The marketplaces that are offered by AWS and Azure and
others. It it's quite remarkable.
We all use Amazon.com, right? For, for ease of purchases and,
(28:35):
and all that convenience, for simplicity and, and, and you
know, and all that many businesses today are going to
AWS marketplace, for example, tosimplify how they manage their
billing, to simplify the procurement processes.
And in some cases, they can actually draw down a committed
(28:55):
spend that they have with AWS and use that to purchase third
party software like Ibms or others from these hyperscaler
marketplaces. So, and from a trend
perspective, you'll be amazed tohear that there are many large
software companies that are now transacting over a billion
(29:15):
dollars in, in, in these marketplaces and on the AWS
marketplace, to name a few, Crowd Strike and Snowflake and
Splunk and even Salesforce have now exceeded a billion dollars
in transactions on these marketplaces.
So those are a couple key trendsthat I'm seeing.
Obviously AI and automation, butthen these marketplaces and a
(29:39):
move to the cloud and just sort of elaborating on where IBM is,
is position itself in the hybridcloud.
But I think more and more partnerships will continue to be
relevant as more it comes automated.
As more purchases are occurring through these marketplaces
through a product LED growth type of approach to purchasing,
more products are going to be embedded in others to scale and
(30:01):
more relationships will be needed across business
partnerships to help make these transitions as as simplified and
seamless for and customers. And, and interestingly enough,
you look at Salesforce, when Salesforce came out, companies
like Accenture didn't know whether or not there was still
going to be a need for a lot of services, right, because you
(30:22):
weren't implementing software solutions the way you did before
perpetual license software solutions.
But these businesses like Accenture have been thriving
with SAS software because there's so much room for
automation, sorry for customization, building AP is
etcetera. And so I think they'll continue
(30:43):
to be a need, if not a greater need for business partners as as
we move. Forward yeah, I want to drill
down on one point that you made,which I think it's worth just a
mentioning further because I've had this a couple times in my
last couple software companies have been been with is the the
ability for you to sell your software and for your customer
to take down obligated credits on these platforms is really
(31:07):
key. I mean, that was critical to us
because it gave extra incentive for them to do this deal because
they they have to pay this stuff.
They're obligated to pay this stuff to these platforms.
And a lot of times they're scrambling at last minute to
figure out how do we do that so that we're not just paying for
nothing for unused credits, right.
So can you just talk a little bit more about that?
(31:27):
I think it's important for our listeners.
Yeah. So for AWS, they call it an EDP
enterprise discount scout program.
And so, you know, customers, in many cases business partners
have these in place. Obviously, you know, they're
committing a certain amount of spend based on what they believe
they're going to consume of AWS in this case and AWS services,
(31:47):
which are what they would call their products.
But but often they don't, they don't meet, they don't meet
those particular goals, right. And so it's a win win for the
company that's made this commitment and, and also for AWS
to give the option for them to spend that on, on a software
solution that's running on theirinfrastructure, right?
AWS is going to benefit either way.
(32:09):
And so, you know, as a seller, when you're looking for a
budget, these Ed PS are not a bad place to look, right?
And and if it's the customer's preference to transact in this
manner, then not only will you find budget, but you'll find a
much simpler way to procure the products.
Now you still have to do your selling.
I think some sellers think they've got this like notion
(32:30):
that, oh, it's there and there'sthis money and they're just
going to buy our software. We'll stand in line.
They could buy other software too.
It's interesting you would mention that because creative
ways of being able to go and buyand take advantage of those,
those kind of types of credits that you might have and those
unusual types of products or private programs that maybe
people don't necessarily understand.
(32:51):
They've been important in the past and I think as we're going
forward today with you had mentioned, you know, the whole
AI explosion, we've had some folks coming on from the AI
world before. And I can see how understanding
and even discovering that they even have those opportunities
are things that people are goingto be struggling with.
And that's where the seller really comes to the table with
(33:12):
being able to go and communicatethose to the folks that they're
trying to sell to or else otherwise how would they even
know they had that opportunity to take advantage of such a
program, right? That's right.
Well, and it takes education, right?
I think we're all going through this period of, you know,
retraining or, or, you know, andthat I think if you, I look back
(33:33):
on my career and some of the things that have helped me be
successful, it's it's always having that as Salesforce refers
to it as the beginner's mind, right, As AWS refers to it as in
one of their leadership principles is, is always be
curious, right? And continuously learning,
right, Just always trying to learn something new.
And this is an example of that. And so, you know, we do a lot of
(33:57):
training at IBM for our sellers.And obviously, you know, for,
for sellers at AWS as well around this partnership, helping
them understand that, that, thatthis relationship is more
complementary than it is competitive, that, that there's
the benefit to AWS that our software is running on their
infrastructure. So that that benefits them and
and for IBM sellers, a customer may prefer to run the software
(34:23):
and purchase it through AWS. And so you can't be ignorant to
that reality. You need to understand what that
is and have that be a part of your sales strategy and sales
processes and and at least present that option to a
customer and find out if that istheir preference.
And so some sellers shy away from understanding that.
(34:44):
But in this equation, all sellers are made whole.
So an AWS seller makes money thesame way they would otherwise.
An IBM seller makes money when they sell it on AWS and so and
then the customer is able to draw down that ADP.
So it really is a win win acrossthe board and it takes just a
little. Bit of education, understand
some of the nuances you talked. You talked about kind of your
(35:06):
success as being in the partner role and what makes for
successful partnerships. A lot of that being just the
ability to collaborate effectively across all the
teams. That was always a challenge just
at IBM for me doing that stuff. But imagine bringing all the
partner teams, the sellers, etcetera.
And in fact, I think you said you built a software company
around around that, right as well.
(35:28):
So I just wonder if you just take a few minutes and talk
about what, yeah, how to developthat successfully, What makes
for successful collaboration? What were some of the tools or
techniques that you used that allowed that to happen?
Yeah. So, you know, I think in terms
of, and I touched on this earlier, just what makes a
successful partner program it, it is ensuring that there that
(35:49):
whoever's running partnerships has an equal seat at the table.
It's, it's acknowledging the value that partnerships could
bring and the required investment.
It's not just some sort of preconceived expectation.
I think for a small software company or smaller businesses,
they may say, OK, bring in partnerships and we're going to
exponentially increase our salesovernight or in a few months,
(36:12):
right? Hey, partner guy, go build this
thing. Go make the magic happen, right?
Like it's just like Pixie dust, right?
But the reality is, is partnerships are complicated,
right? To achieve the results that you
want out of partnerships, you need committed resources across
the product team, across the services team, across marketing
and sales. I touched on this a little bit
(36:33):
earlier as well. And you know, tea leaf, although
we weren't a big company, we didhave the right commitment from
the right group. So and then, you know, once we
are acquired, we, we could basically throw some gasoline on
all those initiatives and, and scale up.
So as your company does get bigger, you could start to hire
more resources and scale the partner program.
But you know, I think it's important to recognize that
(36:55):
partner managers have loads of responsibilities across so many
different roles, from contracting to on boarding new
partners, to enabling the partners, to training and
certifying, to managing those partner relationships, building
joint solutions to Co selling todemand Gen. to Co marketing, to
tracking and reporting, the listgoes on.
So, you know, obviously as much as you could sort of automate a
(37:19):
lot of these motions, there are some tools that can help you do
this. And, and, and as and as long as
you can in small software company cases, dedicate some
resources to support the the partner team and eventually
scale up and dedicate the right committed resources to these
(37:40):
initiatives. The likeliness that you're going
to increase your success. And that is of course, based on
building the right partnerships for the right objectives to
begin with. And then there are there are
some good tools. So obviously there's, there's
Salesforce, you know, there's a bunch of partner management
tools out there on the marketplace that, that, that
(38:02):
could be used. And you know, the product that I
launched our globe, I was way ahead of our time and I was able
to land Oracle as my first enterprise customer.
They rolled it out to a good number of their 26,000 partners
at the time. So that was a major achievement
that we had back in the day. But interestingly enough, the
same concept, the same objectives of our globe today
(38:26):
exists in a company called Crossbeam and a company called
Workspan. And these companies are thriving
in in managing billions of dollars in transactions and
opportunities and deals through their platform across the
hyperscalers and all the software companies.
They're becoming the standard. So I have some level of comfort
knowing that I was on to something back in the day.
(38:48):
But nonetheless, I learned, learned a ton, and I'm able to
take that expertise into everything I do every day on the
job here. You know, I think the value to
any organization, small, medium sized, enterprise size, the
value, the critical value that partners can be bringing to the
table in terms of the full forcemultiplier is pretty clear.
(39:10):
What are some you know, you've already you've gone through this
exercise yourself multiple TimesNow.
What are some of the things thatorganizations typically do wrong
when they're looking to go and focus on bringing out a partner
program? What's kind of like I see it all
the time, this is where they tend to fail.
Yeah, I think it is the sort of it's the, it's the understanding
(39:31):
that you have to commit the right resources, right?
And it's not hiring 10 people when you're just starting a
partner organization. It's ensuring that everyone in
the organization understands what is the plan, why are we
building these part, this partner program, Who are the
partners that we're going after,what are we expecting and having
(39:53):
specific goals and metrics around the program and the
partnerships that you're forming, integrating the partner
leadership. Into the fabric of the company,
right, whether that is general company planning, specific
targets and goals for the company, integrating them into
the sales kickoffs into QBRS. The key is that you think about
(40:15):
what are we trying to achieve with with the partner program.
Is it increased sales? It is, it is it enhancing our go
to market with our product, is it embedding some capability
that we just are never going to build or it's going to take us
many, many years to build. So we want to partner with
another technology company to tofill that gap.
Is it you know building a services business for a service
(40:37):
company and you know them determining which of the three
hyperscalers or which of the large enterprise software
companies they want to build their relationship around.
So I think it is starting with the right plan, setting the
right metrics, making the right investments and and really
making partnerships a key integral part of your business.
(40:57):
Excellent. You know, it sounds like a
fascinating part of the businessfor people to be getting getting
into and maybe doesn't necessarily carry the panache
something like sales would, but it's clearly critical to the
overall success of a software organization.
Some of the folks that are listening to our session today,
they're going. I wonder if that's for me.
If somebody was kicking that idea around thinking maybe I
(41:19):
should be exploring partners, what advice would you give them
as they were considering maybe getting into the partner space?
For me, I've seen partner programs of what compelled me
back in the early days of the Cisco strategic partnerships I
was involved in in the early 2000s.
It was seeing the massive impactin exponential sales impact that
(41:45):
the partnership had that intrigued me and caught my
attention. And you know, it's, it's been an
opportunity to essentially run apart of the business, right.
I mentioned all those different roles that a partner manager
has. It's an opportunity for not only
impact if executed effectively at a large scale, but it's
(42:08):
getting your hands into a variety of different aspects of
running a business and being able to work closely with the
product team, being able to workclosely with professional
services and the sales team and the sales engineers.
And so it's also interesting thetypes of people involved and
getting involved in partner roles.
(42:29):
You kind of think of it like, you know, 22 sports that I sort
of built throughout my career, MMA and mixed martial arts and,
and kite boarding. And, and those may be two
interesting references in terms of where you going with this.
But you know, if you think aboutthose two sports, you got people
from all different sports cominginto them, right?
Mixed martial arts, you got boxers, you got folks with a
(42:50):
variety of different martial arts skills where they're coming
from Brazil or Japan or, or, or wherever, judo versus other
types of, of martial arts, they're coming together, they're
providing something new and exciting to make, make the sport
interesting and and exciting forothers.
And kiteboarding, same thing youget people from from
wakeboarding and water skiing and snowboarding all coming into
(43:13):
this sport. So similarly in partnerships,
there's no single path to partnerships.
We've got people you think aboutRuba who runs the partner
ecosystem for AWS, so she came from Boston Consulting.
So you're seeing a lot of peoplecoming from these management
consulting firms who are coming in and and leading these partner
organizations or you see people from sales backgrounds bringing
(43:35):
that perspective and that experience or engineers just
coming in and just trying to do something different that has an
impact on the business. So I think if it's, I think it's
a, it's a, it's a unique space that for someone who wants to
make a big impact and sees that their skills can be very
relevant and impactful, it's definitely a space to consider
(43:58):
and. Explore.
So definitely somebody who's entrepreneurial in spirit and
competitive by nature, is what you're saying?
Absolutely. I think that that's a good
summary. And I would say there's
definitely sum up your characteristics, not all of your
qualities because that's a long list, but definitely 2
characteristics that we've certainly ascribed to you, my
friend. I would love for us to keep
(44:19):
going on. I'm learning as I always do when
I'm sitting down talking with you.
I'm learning about aspects of the industry that I don't
normally get exposure to and enjoying it tremendously.
But we do need to bring our episode to a close.
So with that being said, if there is somebody out there
who's thinking, you know, I think I might want to cut my
teeth on this. What would be a good way for
them to maybe get in touch with you to to maybe bounce some
(44:41):
ideas or maybe learn a little bit more about the space?
Yeah, I think the easiest way isjust LinkedIn.
Reach out to me, make a request,shoot me a message.
I'm very passionate about the space and would be very very
happy to to have a discussion with anyone interested in in
more information. And your passion definitely is
reflected in the impact and successes you've had in that
(45:02):
space. And I wish you even more as the
years go on. So thank you very much for
coming on board here today and sharing with us.
My pleasure, Great to see you guys again.
Great to see you too, Sir. And folks, when you get a
chance, please, if you haven't already done so, take a moment
like follow, subscribe, comment on the show, share with us some
(45:22):
ideas about topics and subjects you want us to explore that we
haven't done already. Come on next week and join us
right here where we'll have another guest sharing ideas,
thoughts, best practices and insights from the world of
enterprise software sales. If you would like, you can go to
our website and buy a copy of our book and winning fout faster
(45:44):
the Move framework for enterprise Software sales
success. And you can learn about the the
methodology here Matt and I are referring to.
But for now, that is the end of our show.
Thank you for spending a little bit of time with us.
Matt, thank you very much for coming onto the show again
today. It's always wonderful to see
you. That's you.
(46:05):
And Tamer, thank you again for coming on.
It has been much too long since we sat down and had a
conversation about the business.Can't wait for us to have
another one again. Looking forward to it, thank
you. All right, folks, we will see
you here next week on the same podcast.
Take care.
Welcome to Software Sales Simplified Move to Success, your
weekly stop for the latest and greatest on all of the insights,
trends and learnings that you need to in order to be a better
seller. Whether you are just starting
out or you're an old hand at selling, come and join us every
week here where we share our thoughts and the thoughts of our
(00:28):
guests. Matt Long and I are going to be
your Co host today and between the two of us we have over 50
years worth of experience selling software, running
software teams in the space of enterprise software sales.
Before we get started too deeply, Please remember to like,
follow, subscribe and leave comments on whatever channel and
platform it is that you're listening to.
(00:49):
Our episode really helps the show out.
My name is Kevin Donville and I'm going to be one of your
hosts today and the other host is going to be my partner or in
crime and all around best friend, Matt Long.
Matt, how you doing today, Sir? I'm doing great, Kevin.
Happy to be here for another week and another podcast.
Another week, another podcast. We had a bit of an unusual one
(01:10):
last week. We we went and announced our
education series. If you haven't had a chance to
check that one out, check out that episode as well as the
education video that we produced, which is the first in
our new series, which is all about what is a sales engineer.
And we're getting a lot of greatfeedback, but we'd like to know
your thoughts as well. That's on YouTube by the way.
We'll put those links right downin the description, so if you
(01:30):
don't know where to find it, if you don't know where our YouTube
channel is, just go ahead and take a look at the description.
There'll be a link to take you right there.
But today we have a guest with us, a gentleman who Matt and I
have both worked with in the past.
In fact, I think we have crossedpaths more than once over the
course of our professional careers.
And that is Tamara Osmond. So, Sir, how are you?
(01:51):
Good to see you here. Welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been too long.
Missed working with you guys. Love what you guys are doing and
happy to be a part of a little piece of it today and join you
guys. Little piece that we hope turns
into a big piece. I have always been fascinated
working with you. We've had a couple of really
(02:11):
creative, interesting and thought provoking meetings with
partners, customers, developers,technology partners and business
partners over the years. And it's always been a real
thrill for me to go into those meetings with you because I know
that they're going to be high value and they're going to be a
lot of fun. And that's the space that you
come from. You come to us with the
(02:33):
perspective of partnerships and what partnerships mean to the
software industry. So I know you, Matt knows you,
but our guests do not. Please take a moment, take the
floor and introduce yourself to everybody here and tell them a
little bit about what you do andwho do it with.
You know, you were talking aboutyour combined 50 years of
experience. I'm right about that point,
about 25 years in my career, launched it back in the.com boom
(02:56):
back in San Francisco, South of market, which is kind of where
it was all happening there. And I was fortunate to play
fairly pivotal role in the launch of KPMG Big 5 firm back
in the day and their e-business division.
I come in through an acquisitionof a web development studio that
they made and it was a pretty exciting run.com boom went to
bust and I had to kind of look around for my next gig.
(03:18):
And I end up getting into my first partnership role and it
was managing the West for the Cisco Systems strategic
partnership. Cisco at the time was
essentially the NVIDIA of the era andinthe.com area.
And so I was fortunate enough toget into that role.
Started to understand the the value of partnerships, strategic
partnerships, impact they make. Went on to managing strategic
(03:42):
alliances with Siebel Systems, Sun, two companies are now part
of Oracle. CA left, went to work for
another GSI was able to manage the Microsoft partnership there
for a bit and really All in all got got to touch, you know, over
a billion dollars in business that these partners were were
influencing and impacting and beable to work with some of these
(04:05):
really iconic CE OS. Early in my career that sparked
an idea for me to to launch my first startup and a company
called our globe. I started from this concept of
collaborative selling, and what I found in all these strategic
partnerships is you're mapping all these accounts to try to get
sales teams to work. Together so you could jointly
prospect and win more business. Well, there's a very tedious
(04:28):
exercise and so I was like, you know, just like these dating
sites out there, there's got to be a way to automate this
process a bit. And so I took this crazy journey
of building this cross company collaborative selling platform.
And so I did that for several years, built the software, ran
the company, unfortunately. We're a bit.
Ahead of our time, so you know ended up sort of sunsetting sold
(04:50):
parts of of that company and right about that time Ira
Pollock, who we all know very well running sales.
For for tea leaf. And he knew me back from the
KPMG days, reached out and said,hey, what are you doing?
You know a thing or two about partnerships, come over here and
run our partner program. So I was fortunate enough to to
come join Tea Leaf when you guyswere there, had another
(05:11):
opportunity at the same time. But it was there's no question
that that was the right one. And you guys know sort of from
there being acquired by IBMI, went on to work for a company
called Demandware, leader in thecommerce.
Space, Salesforce, AWS. And then back at IBM, so I'm
back at IBM now and running a part of our business around
(05:31):
building ecosystems on a hyper scalar partnership.
So AWS and and Microsoft and thetypes of partners that that are
are working with, with both of those companies as well as ours.
And how do we drive more software sales through these
business partners is really my focus today.
Safe to say I've touched a few different types of partnerships.
Understand the model of and and the models very well.
(05:55):
Whether you're on the services side or the software side or
hyperscaler side, what's relevant and, and whether you're
reselling or you're managed service provider or you're
embedding your technology into another technology for some
purpose. Whether you're a start up or
whether you're an enterprise Oregon, a medium sized company.
I've I've seen a bit of it all and seen what, what kind of
(06:17):
works and what doesn't for both the companies and for the people
involved, specifically sellers, right.
And how do they actually sell more in their roles and and
achieve or exceed their quotas? You mentioned hyperscaler a
couple times. Can you just talk about what
that means? Yeah, you know, I interestingly
have. I didn't really even hear the
word hyperscaler until I joined,or at least was considering
(06:39):
rejoining IBM. Hyperscalers are essentially the
three very fast growing public cloud.
Providers. So AWS being #1, Azure #2 and
Google or GCP being #3 and theseare companies for the most part
are referred to as hyper scalersbelieve for the most part based
(07:01):
on just the the hyper growth that they not only have have
shown themselves, but for companies that that decide to
leverage their infrastructure and their services to to rapidly
grow as well. So you're touching on something
that I think is one of the things I'm hoping that the
audience walks away with today. There's a lot of folks in the
software industry have been selling for years who don't
really completely understand or appreciate exactly everything
(07:25):
the partners group can be bringing to the table.
And as you just said, there's multiple different kinds of
roles that partners can have andthere's different types of
activities and supports they canprovide.
But I've always looked at the partner group when run properly
as a major innovation arm to sales and being able to be so
something that really moves the game of lives.
(07:46):
You just said a moment ago helping sell things faster in
your past history and you've hadsome amazing opportunities and
you've been exposed some amazingteams in the past.
What are some of the standout innovations or disruptions that
you've seen in the industry in the past?
How and what have they been and how they defined that career
that you've had? Yeah, yeah, at least on the
(08:08):
things or innovations or events that have defined my career.
There are some that definitely stand out, some of which have
nothing to do with partnerships at all and are moments where I'm
like, wow, that that definitely led to a big step forward in my
career. There are a couple where you're
like, oh, that kind of led to maybe a step back, some lessons
(08:31):
learned there. I think we we've all
experienced, I think it in, in my experience working.
With the Cisco partnership and. I mentioned I touched on Co
selling and mapping these accounts and I was probably the
youngest person in that role. I was fortunate to be in and
within the first year I was ableto exceed 175% of my quota
(08:54):
through an approach that I took to collaborative selling and
mapping. You know sellers across a large
set of accounts. In this case, the partnership
had had. Built out these joint solutions
and offerings that benefited both KPMG and Cisco and and so
it was up to us in the field to to capitalize on that strategic
(09:15):
partnership. And so through the methodology
that I took to mapping sellers around mutual accounts and
opportunities, I was able to to exceed my target and help a lot
of sellers do so themselves. I also touched on the startup
that I launched that was based on me understanding that there's
so much value if you can get theright people around a set of
(09:38):
target accounts focused on driving mutually beneficial
outcomes for the customers and for themselves as sellers, the
opportunity could be tremendous.Just so happened that I was
doing very manually. I literally spend like nights,
I'm like watching ATV show or Sports Center and I'm mapping
these accounts in preparation for the next day or.
For. You know, some, some strategic
(09:59):
planning that we're doing in a specific region or industry with
sellers. So this concept I had was around
if we could automate that, take the tediousness out of that
process and then and then. Figure out how you could rapidly
build. Trust between sellers too.
It's important that the sellers understand a with the value
proposition. What's the win win for both
companies. But then you know you need to be
(10:20):
able to trust this person like they're not gonna screw me in
this account, right? Like they're actually gonna.
Help me achieve my objectives and understand that I'm trying
to do the same. But we all have a respective
goals, so how? How do you do that?
And a lot of that comes down to trust and, and trusting the
person that that you're trying to partner with and of course,
trusting the company that you'reworking with.
Another big pivotal moment in mycareer was, you know, after we
(10:43):
were acquired by IBM as as tea leaf, right?
I built up a partner program. I I built up a program for
enabling partners, enabling partner sellers to be able to
sell our products, enabling partners to be able to deliver
professional services the way our professional services team
did at Tea Leaf, but to be able to really do that at scale.
We didn't really have the resources to roll out these
(11:06):
programs. So when we got acquired by IBM,
it was like all, all systems go launch these enablement programs
target partners that are complementary to what Tea Leap
provides and and can provide themarket at scale.
And so it was it was by figuringout who the right adjacent
partners are based on them partnering around other
(11:27):
complementary or adjacent products that IBM was already
selling and then enabling them at scale is what we did.
Within a very short amount of time, we were able to launch
these these programs. And as a result, we were able to
recruit over 100 partners that were certified to sell and
deliver service around tea leaf,which led to to massive growth
(11:48):
for the company post acquisition.
So for me, that was a really gratifying thing, to be able to
roll this thing out. Roll out a strategy that enables
to acquire new partners at scalewithin the IBM system and as a
result help our sellers make a lot of money and and the company
has a newly acquired company be very successful and I'd say the
last one. In more recent times, as part of
(12:11):
working for AWS for about four years, I launched this Product
Ambassador program when I was working with the Database
Services line within AW and. It was all about, similarly, how
do you enable business partners at scale?
We expect these business partners to influence our
business, help us sell our products.
But so often you bring in a business partner, they don't
(12:31):
really know exactly what to say or how to describe the product
or how to represent it effectively.
So I thought to myself, well, what if we trained our business
partners the same way we train our specialized sellers?
And how about we do that in a rapid way that we could validate
they're capable, that could alsoenable our sellers to know who
do they trust to bring into accounts and who do they
actually partner with. So I came up with this program,
(12:54):
built it out, launched it withinthree months, was able to get it
to market and get approvals fromlegal, get approvals from
branding for this program. And as a result was able to get
1000 plus sellers across 100 plus partners in 60 plus
countries to adopt this program,get certified and the impact on
sales is tremendous. And so the success of that
(13:17):
product program was then rolled out.
Across multiple other product service lines within AWS and so
that that that was really prettyawesome program that that stands
out for me. That's first of all music to my
ears and I understand just how Herculean a task that must have
been. I walked the Enablement Rd. more
than once and like you, I had Big 5, Big Six roots as well
(13:41):
because I started out at your competitor DNT.
So we were, you know, sometimes on opposite sides of those
equations. But I do appreciate how hard
that can be with respect to enabling that many people over
that short of a time frame to doit effectively.
I mean, you're pushing boundaries there and you're
definitely that is an innovativeapproach.
(14:03):
People don't necessarily think of the partner group as leading
that effort. But as a result, I mean, there's
just, it's just illustrative of just how to what degree sales
doesn't realize what they've gotpotentially with their pre sales
teams, right, apart from the presales teams, their partner
teams. So with respect to that, I mean,
(14:23):
you clearly found a niche, you executed that plan.
What are some of the things thatother organizations might want
to start looking at with respectto really making the most out of
the partnership between sales and the partner?
Group, I think when it comes to I, I think what you're getting
to is, is sort of a fostering ofminds of experimentation and
(14:44):
sales. Is that fair to say?
That's absolutely, absolutely fair.
Yeah, I, you know, I think with all the big ideas or times when
I've really felt like I've made an impact, it often comes down
to listening and working backwards from your customers,
from your fellow sellers, the sellers in the company, your
(15:04):
business partners, you know, understanding what's going to
make an impact. For them and coming up with some
hypotheses, right? Like if we were to do XY and Z,
would it move the needle in a big way?
Gather that data, pilot, you know.
A play or two and then just iterate.
And that's what I've seen in terms of what's worked for me in
(15:26):
terms of making a big impact or innovating and and
experimenting, experimenting effectively.
I would say also then for sellers who, who maybe aren't
working closely with business partners today is that they try
to align with one business partner, right?
A really well aligned business partner, a trusted seller and
try it out, right? Experiment and see where it goes
(15:48):
from there. And and once they see success,
just continue to repeat it with a similar approach.
I don't know, solid makes sense.Yeah.
I'm, I'm just curious. I mean, I've had some exposure
to working on the partner team way back in the day at
Introspect actually, Kevin, I worked on OEM, you know, kind of
system integrators and things like that.
(16:10):
What can you talk about the different aspects of
partnerships and which one do you focus on because there's
resellers or system integrators,there's technological, you know,
partners, there's OEM. Is there any particular area
that you focus on that you can talk about?
Yeah. And in my, in my experience,
I've worked with pretty much allof them, right.
So depending on whether you're aservices company or you're a
(16:33):
startup and or a hyper scaler for that matter, or if you're a
small or a medium business, an established company or again a
startup, it it totally varies. And.
For technology companies, what they're looking for is going to
be different than a services company right back in the day.
When I referred to my experienceat KPMG, we were the services
(16:53):
arm for these large software companies, Siebel Systems and
and many others, and So what they wanted was a trusted
advisor, a third party that could go in.
Encourage a customer to make a decision, the right decision,
and then ultimately they needed a partner that could implement
their software. And that's what customers needed
(17:14):
is a, someone they could trust to help them make a decision and
B someone who could actually help them implement the product
for the software company or the hardware company.
In case of of Cisco Systems, they need partners that can
advise customers and could, could implement their their
products and solutions. So it really just depends on on
where you are, on which side of the coin here and what motion
(17:37):
will help you grow your business, accelerate your
business through partnership. With respect to that now, I
mean, obviously you've worn a lot of different hats.
What is your team presently doing and how are they driving
success over at IBM today? Yeah, it's, it's interesting you
see businesses that are driving success with partnerships.
Many healthy partner programs are driving in excess of 25% of
the of the business's revenue. Yeah.
(17:59):
Average in the software space orin the in the tech space is is
50 plus percent and some companies are doing 80 plus but
when you think about demand where a company I was working
for almost all their. Business was going through a
business partner touching a business partner.
The services arm of the company was very light and they really
built their business around business partners.
Cisco Systems massive channel where 80 plus percent of their
(18:21):
business is going through a business partner in some way
shape or form so. Some companies really make this
a core part of their business and others are sort of
experimenting, but more and morebusinesses are getting into
partnerships and are making thata focal part of of their
business. And in my role at IBM and IBM
(18:44):
does a massive amount of business through business
partners. Really there's only, if you
think about it, there's only about 500 to 600 direct accounts
that IBM really focuses on. The rest of the accounts, some
80,000 or so, are intended to gothrough business partners, what
we call our select accounts. So IBM really relies heavily on
(19:08):
business partners and historically folks have looked
at partners as an indirect channel, but the reality is
actually that they can be your most direct channel possible.
And, and, and why do I say that?If you think about it, 84% of B
to B purchasing decisions start with a referral, right?
(19:29):
And most purchases in business to business come through some
sort of recommendation. And so your business partners,
they have these trusted relationships, right?
They've already done the hard. Work.
They are trusted by the end customer.
So if you could work with a business partner that has those
established relationships, you're getting warm
introductions, you're getting recommendations.
(19:51):
So it's, I think it's very important.
For companies and and sellers tounderstand that that dynamic,
Yeah, when I just something thatyou mentioned.
So you're at Tea Leaf with the IBM acquisition and you were at
Demandware when Salesforce acquired them, right?
Interestingly enough, I had leftDemandware before the
acquisition. I I did believe that that was a
(20:13):
potential acquisition play. You know, sort of interesting
note, I I took all my stock fromIBM and rolled it into
Demandware. And and when they got bought by
Salesforce that, that was an event that I was glad I actually
did and then had the foresight to do back then.
Interesting enough though, if you look, I mean, at that time
(20:35):
IBM stock didn't really move a whole lot, but in the last two
years it's gone up over 80%. I'd like to think I have
something to do with that, but obviously there's a lot of
things that are going on. Oh, you've.
Got the floor good, you know. IBM in the past, yeah.
I was going to say, you could bekind of the acquisition
whisperer. We just follow you around to see
what's going to be acquired next.
So that's probably not going to be IBM.
(20:57):
I'll say I wanted to circle backthough, just I've worked with
partner teams before and I thinkthe biggest hurdle I've always
seen was just getting momentum going in that partnership.
Because usually it's like, OK, we'll review accounts to sell.
It sounds great. There's a deck and then nothing
happens unless someone brings anopportunity in and actually
closes. Then people get excited again,
(21:18):
you know, sales people are right.
It's like, but for from your experience, what really gets a
successful program going? What are some of the motions or
activities or things that reallymake a partnership work?
Yeah. That's a great question.
You know, I think most sales people are still concerned that
that partnerships, you know willslow them down right there.
(21:39):
And I think that this is based on a lack of experience maybe
with with partners or a good partner or bad experience they
had or lack of past success. And there's a little secret that
the best sales people leverage partners as an integral part of
their sales strategy. When you think about to our days
with with Sam. And Gary and, and those guys,
(22:01):
you know, it's not like partnerswere all the, you know, in all
their deals, but it was, it was a key component to the way that
that they sold and, and how theydid business.
You know, interesting stats. Partner sourced opportunities
have an average of 30% higher win rates, 34 roughly percent
(22:27):
higher, higher contract value, 60% lower acquisition costs, two
to three times shorter sales cycles, and then the retention
rates are also higher. So the benefits are very clear
to partnerships, to both the businesses that that that have
successful partner ecosystems and partner programs, but then
(22:48):
also for the sellers that participate.
But that being said, it's critical you understand, you
know, why are you partnering, right?
Like what is the objective back to the type of business you are?
Are you an SI or services company, a startup, a
hyperscaler, a SAS company? You know, why are you, why are
you building partnerships or whyare you managing these types of
(23:10):
partners? And then the what the different
types of partners, which vary based on the type of company you
are. And then at what stage, you
know, are you a small software company like Tea Leaf and you
have one person managing the program?
Do you have other resources supporting that individual?
I mentioned once we were bought,we were able to do a whole lot
more because there were more resources focused on
(23:31):
partnerships. But one thing I did like about
Tea Leaf is at least there was acommitment, right, Like Ira had
a commitment to build a partner ecosystem, you know,
professional sales, our professional services was
dedicated to building a program.Our own partners marketing would
support building collateral and and building the messaging that
that could be taken to market with business partners.
(23:52):
So the key is that partnerships have a seat at the table.
It's an initiative that the companies bought into and that
you have the right resources invested in in ensuring that
it's a successful program and that, you know, not all, not all
partnerships are the same. Some partners and partnerships
will work out really well. Some people at partners will be
(24:12):
really well and effective to work at and others won't be
right. So I think you just have to have
an open mind, invest in the right partnerships, invest in
the right relationships and and you'll inevitably see some of
the results that successful partnerships and people who
engage in partnerships are able to derive.
That's a, that's a key point to bring up, right, Because right
(24:32):
now in our industry and there always seems to be going every
few years, there's like a cycle to this, pardon me, there's,
there's disruptions that are happening inside the marketplace
right now. What do you feel from your
perspective on the partner side of the house?
What do you feel are the biggestdisruptions that are happening
right now and and what can partners bring to the table to
(24:54):
help address and maybe mitigate some of those disruptions?
Yeah, I think it's a great question.
You know, obviously we're all seeing the impacts of AI, gender
of AI in particular automation is very big.
Arvind, our CEO talks very openly about how we're using AI
at IBM, how we're using automation.
(25:16):
We haven't had to let some people go as we're looking to
automate portions of our of our HR and, and various processes
and become more efficient as a company.
You know, there's, there's a lotof efficiencies that are being
created. And I think we're finding it in
use cases across all roles, across all industries.
You know, we're seeing it in sales.
(25:36):
And I think the most simple thing we're seeing, I think all
of us is, is automated note takers, right?
And the efficiencies that those are bringing.
I, I know there's a lot of AI automations occurring within
Salesforce in helping sellers prepare for calls or manage
opportunities. And so, you know, it's obvious
that AI and automation are impacting all of us in the tech
(26:00):
industry. We're feeling it.
Those are two big areas in termsof solution capabilities and
software solutions and platformsthat IBM is focused on, which I
think have contributed to our stock valuation over the past
couple years and our investmentsand acquisitions we've been
making there. I touched on some of the others,
you know, cloud, you know, hyperscalers, if you think about it,
(26:23):
these guys, you know, there's they, they've been growing so
fast and I think you can see thevaluations of of the hyper
scalers and and and. How their growth has worked out
for them, but. You know, interestingly enough,
these hyper scalers, as more, more companies are moving
workloads to these clouds, 52% of enterprises have workloads
(26:46):
that are in a public cloud, 7% are planning to move more
workloads in the next 12 months.So although that sounds maybe
like a large #52%. There's still a large number
that is not addressed yet, so that's still an opportunity for
these hyper scalers. But it's also plays directly
into IBM strategy focused on a hybrid cloud strategy.
(27:08):
There are just some workloads that aren't going to move right.
And so IBM's position itself, right sort of in the middle.
I like to use the reference of Switzerland in that they are
helping customers wherever they plan to run their workloads.
Do you plan to keep some of those workloads on Prem?
We got solutions for that. Are you planning on running some
of them in Azure, some in GCP and some on IWS?
(27:30):
We'll support you there, right. So you hear the reference to
meeting customers where they areat a lot at IBM and that's sort
of how we're, we're position ourselves to be a hybrid cloud
leader, if not the hybrid cloud leader and an AI leader.
And you see that in the partnership with AWS.
The reason why I'm here in 2022 strategic partnership was formed
(27:50):
with AWS around that concept. IBM is seeing customers of
theirs historically that they thought they can keep maybe on
their public cloud or private cloud.
Now moving to a WSIBM realized if we're not there, they may
leave us. So we need to make our software
available on AWS. And now IB Ms. got over 100
(28:11):
software listings that customerscan procure and provision easily
to some extent on AWS. That's another key disruptor
that I wanted to raise are marketplaces and marketplace.
The marketplaces that are offered by AWS and Azure and
others. It it's quite remarkable.
We all use Amazon.com, right? For, for ease of purchases and,
(28:35):
and all that convenience, for simplicity and, and, and you
know, and all that many businesses today are going to
AWS marketplace, for example, tosimplify how they manage their
billing, to simplify the procurement processes.
And in some cases, they can actually draw down a committed
(28:55):
spend that they have with AWS and use that to purchase third
party software like Ibms or others from these hyperscaler
marketplaces. So, and from a trend
perspective, you'll be amazed tohear that there are many large
software companies that are now transacting over a billion
(29:15):
dollars in, in, in these marketplaces and on the AWS
marketplace, to name a few, Crowd Strike and Snowflake and
Splunk and even Salesforce have now exceeded a billion dollars
in transactions on these marketplaces.
So those are a couple key trendsthat I'm seeing.
Obviously AI and automation, butthen these marketplaces and a
(29:39):
move to the cloud and just sort of elaborating on where IBM is,
is position itself in the hybridcloud.
But I think more and more partnerships will continue to be
relevant as more it comes automated.
As more purchases are occurring through these marketplaces
through a product LED growth type of approach to purchasing,
more products are going to be embedded in others to scale and
(30:01):
more relationships will be needed across business
partnerships to help make these transitions as as simplified and
seamless for and customers. And, and interestingly enough,
you look at Salesforce, when Salesforce came out, companies
like Accenture didn't know whether or not there was still
going to be a need for a lot of services, right, because you
(30:22):
weren't implementing software solutions the way you did before
perpetual license software solutions.
But these businesses like Accenture have been thriving
with SAS software because there's so much room for
automation, sorry for customization, building AP is
etcetera. And so I think they'll continue
(30:43):
to be a need, if not a greater need for business partners as as
we move. Forward yeah, I want to drill
down on one point that you made,which I think it's worth just a
mentioning further because I've had this a couple times in my
last couple software companies have been been with is the the
ability for you to sell your software and for your customer
to take down obligated credits on these platforms is really
(31:07):
key. I mean, that was critical to us
because it gave extra incentive for them to do this deal because
they they have to pay this stuff.
They're obligated to pay this stuff to these platforms.
And a lot of times they're scrambling at last minute to
figure out how do we do that so that we're not just paying for
nothing for unused credits, right.
So can you just talk a little bit more about that?
(31:27):
I think it's important for our listeners.
Yeah. So for AWS, they call it an EDP
enterprise discount scout program.
And so, you know, customers, in many cases business partners
have these in place. Obviously, you know, they're
committing a certain amount of spend based on what they believe
they're going to consume of AWS in this case and AWS services,
(31:47):
which are what they would call their products.
But but often they don't, they don't meet, they don't meet
those particular goals, right. And so it's a win win for the
company that's made this commitment and, and also for AWS
to give the option for them to spend that on, on a software
solution that's running on theirinfrastructure, right?
AWS is going to benefit either way.
(32:09):
And so, you know, as a seller, when you're looking for a
budget, these Ed PS are not a bad place to look, right?
And and if it's the customer's preference to transact in this
manner, then not only will you find budget, but you'll find a
much simpler way to procure the products.
Now you still have to do your selling.
I think some sellers think they've got this like notion
(32:30):
that, oh, it's there and there'sthis money and they're just
going to buy our software. We'll stand in line.
They could buy other software too.
It's interesting you would mention that because creative
ways of being able to go and buyand take advantage of those,
those kind of types of credits that you might have and those
unusual types of products or private programs that maybe
people don't necessarily understand.
(32:51):
They've been important in the past and I think as we're going
forward today with you had mentioned, you know, the whole
AI explosion, we've had some folks coming on from the AI
world before. And I can see how understanding
and even discovering that they even have those opportunities
are things that people are goingto be struggling with.
And that's where the seller really comes to the table with
(33:12):
being able to go and communicatethose to the folks that they're
trying to sell to or else otherwise how would they even
know they had that opportunity to take advantage of such a
program, right? That's right.
Well, and it takes education, right?
I think we're all going through this period of, you know,
retraining or, or, you know, andthat I think if you, I look back
(33:33):
on my career and some of the things that have helped me be
successful, it's it's always having that as Salesforce refers
to it as the beginner's mind, right, As AWS refers to it as in
one of their leadership principles is, is always be
curious, right? And continuously learning,
right, Just always trying to learn something new.
And this is an example of that. And so, you know, we do a lot of
(33:57):
training at IBM for our sellers.And obviously, you know, for,
for sellers at AWS as well around this partnership, helping
them understand that, that, thatthis relationship is more
complementary than it is competitive, that, that there's
the benefit to AWS that our software is running on their
infrastructure. So that that benefits them and
and for IBM sellers, a customer may prefer to run the software
(34:23):
and purchase it through AWS. And so you can't be ignorant to
that reality. You need to understand what that
is and have that be a part of your sales strategy and sales
processes and and at least present that option to a
customer and find out if that istheir preference.
And so some sellers shy away from understanding that.
(34:44):
But in this equation, all sellers are made whole.
So an AWS seller makes money thesame way they would otherwise.
An IBM seller makes money when they sell it on AWS and so and
then the customer is able to draw down that ADP.
So it really is a win win acrossthe board and it takes just a
little. Bit of education, understand
some of the nuances you talked. You talked about kind of your
(35:06):
success as being in the partner role and what makes for
successful partnerships. A lot of that being just the
ability to collaborate effectively across all the
teams. That was always a challenge just
at IBM for me doing that stuff. But imagine bringing all the
partner teams, the sellers, etcetera.
And in fact, I think you said you built a software company
around around that, right as well.
(35:28):
So I just wonder if you just take a few minutes and talk
about what, yeah, how to developthat successfully, What makes
for successful collaboration? What were some of the tools or
techniques that you used that allowed that to happen?
Yeah. So, you know, I think in terms
of, and I touched on this earlier, just what makes a
successful partner program it, it is ensuring that there that
(35:49):
whoever's running partnerships has an equal seat at the table.
It's, it's acknowledging the value that partnerships could
bring and the required investment.
It's not just some sort of preconceived expectation.
I think for a small software company or smaller businesses,
they may say, OK, bring in partnerships and we're going to
exponentially increase our salesovernight or in a few months,
(36:12):
right? Hey, partner guy, go build this
thing. Go make the magic happen, right?
Like it's just like Pixie dust, right?
But the reality is, is partnerships are complicated,
right? To achieve the results that you
want out of partnerships, you need committed resources across
the product team, across the services team, across marketing
and sales. I touched on this a little bit
(36:33):
earlier as well. And you know, tea leaf, although
we weren't a big company, we didhave the right commitment from
the right group. So and then, you know, once we
are acquired, we, we could basically throw some gasoline on
all those initiatives and, and scale up.
So as your company does get bigger, you could start to hire
more resources and scale the partner program.
But you know, I think it's important to recognize that
(36:55):
partner managers have loads of responsibilities across so many
different roles, from contracting to on boarding new
partners, to enabling the partners, to training and
certifying, to managing those partner relationships, building
joint solutions to Co selling todemand Gen. to Co marketing, to
tracking and reporting, the listgoes on.
So, you know, obviously as much as you could sort of automate a
(37:19):
lot of these motions, there are some tools that can help you do
this. And, and, and as and as long as
you can in small software company cases, dedicate some
resources to support the the partner team and eventually
scale up and dedicate the right committed resources to these
(37:40):
initiatives. The likeliness that you're going
to increase your success. And that is of course, based on
building the right partnerships for the right objectives to
begin with. And then there are there are
some good tools. So obviously there's, there's
Salesforce, you know, there's a bunch of partner management
tools out there on the marketplace that, that, that
(38:02):
could be used. And you know, the product that I
launched our globe, I was way ahead of our time and I was able
to land Oracle as my first enterprise customer.
They rolled it out to a good number of their 26,000 partners
at the time. So that was a major achievement
that we had back in the day. But interestingly enough, the
same concept, the same objectives of our globe today
(38:26):
exists in a company called Crossbeam and a company called
Workspan. And these companies are thriving
in in managing billions of dollars in transactions and
opportunities and deals through their platform across the
hyperscalers and all the software companies.
They're becoming the standard. So I have some level of comfort
knowing that I was on to something back in the day.
(38:48):
But nonetheless, I learned, learned a ton, and I'm able to
take that expertise into everything I do every day on the
job here. You know, I think the value to
any organization, small, medium sized, enterprise size, the
value, the critical value that partners can be bringing to the
table in terms of the full forcemultiplier is pretty clear.
(39:10):
What are some you know, you've already you've gone through this
exercise yourself multiple TimesNow.
What are some of the things thatorganizations typically do wrong
when they're looking to go and focus on bringing out a partner
program? What's kind of like I see it all
the time, this is where they tend to fail.
Yeah, I think it is the sort of it's the, it's the understanding
(39:31):
that you have to commit the right resources, right?
And it's not hiring 10 people when you're just starting a
partner organization. It's ensuring that everyone in
the organization understands what is the plan, why are we
building these part, this partner program, Who are the
partners that we're going after,what are we expecting and having
(39:53):
specific goals and metrics around the program and the
partnerships that you're forming, integrating the partner
leadership. Into the fabric of the company,
right, whether that is general company planning, specific
targets and goals for the company, integrating them into
the sales kickoffs into QBRS. The key is that you think about
(40:15):
what are we trying to achieve with with the partner program.
Is it increased sales? It is, it is it enhancing our go
to market with our product, is it embedding some capability
that we just are never going to build or it's going to take us
many, many years to build. So we want to partner with
another technology company to tofill that gap.
Is it you know building a services business for a service
(40:37):
company and you know them determining which of the three
hyperscalers or which of the large enterprise software
companies they want to build their relationship around.
So I think it is starting with the right plan, setting the
right metrics, making the right investments and and really
making partnerships a key integral part of your business.
(40:57):
Excellent. You know, it sounds like a
fascinating part of the businessfor people to be getting getting
into and maybe doesn't necessarily carry the panache
something like sales would, but it's clearly critical to the
overall success of a software organization.
Some of the folks that are listening to our session today,
they're going. I wonder if that's for me.
If somebody was kicking that idea around thinking maybe I
(41:19):
should be exploring partners, what advice would you give them
as they were considering maybe getting into the partner space?
For me, I've seen partner programs of what compelled me
back in the early days of the Cisco strategic partnerships I
was involved in in the early 2000s.
It was seeing the massive impactin exponential sales impact that
(41:45):
the partnership had that intrigued me and caught my
attention. And you know, it's, it's been an
opportunity to essentially run apart of the business, right.
I mentioned all those different roles that a partner manager
has. It's an opportunity for not only
impact if executed effectively at a large scale, but it's
(42:08):
getting your hands into a variety of different aspects of
running a business and being able to work closely with the
product team, being able to workclosely with professional
services and the sales team and the sales engineers.
And so it's also interesting thetypes of people involved and
getting involved in partner roles.
(42:29):
You kind of think of it like, you know, 22 sports that I sort
of built throughout my career, MMA and mixed martial arts and,
and kite boarding. And, and those may be two
interesting references in terms of where you going with this.
But you know, if you think aboutthose two sports, you got people
from all different sports cominginto them, right?
Mixed martial arts, you got boxers, you got folks with a
(42:50):
variety of different martial arts skills where they're coming
from Brazil or Japan or, or, or wherever, judo versus other
types of, of martial arts, they're coming together, they're
providing something new and exciting to make, make the sport
interesting and and exciting forothers.
And kiteboarding, same thing youget people from from
wakeboarding and water skiing and snowboarding all coming into
(43:13):
this sport. So similarly in partnerships,
there's no single path to partnerships.
We've got people you think aboutRuba who runs the partner
ecosystem for AWS, so she came from Boston Consulting.
So you're seeing a lot of peoplecoming from these management
consulting firms who are coming in and and leading these partner
organizations or you see people from sales backgrounds bringing
(43:35):
that perspective and that experience or engineers just
coming in and just trying to do something different that has an
impact on the business. So I think if it's, I think it's
a, it's a, it's a unique space that for someone who wants to
make a big impact and sees that their skills can be very
relevant and impactful, it's definitely a space to consider
(43:58):
and. Explore.
So definitely somebody who's entrepreneurial in spirit and
competitive by nature, is what you're saying?
Absolutely. I think that that's a good
summary. And I would say there's
definitely sum up your characteristics, not all of your
qualities because that's a long list, but definitely 2
characteristics that we've certainly ascribed to you, my
friend. I would love for us to keep
(44:19):
going on. I'm learning as I always do when
I'm sitting down talking with you.
I'm learning about aspects of the industry that I don't
normally get exposure to and enjoying it tremendously.
But we do need to bring our episode to a close.
So with that being said, if there is somebody out there
who's thinking, you know, I think I might want to cut my
teeth on this. What would be a good way for
them to maybe get in touch with you to to maybe bounce some
(44:41):
ideas or maybe learn a little bit more about the space?
Yeah, I think the easiest way isjust LinkedIn.
Reach out to me, make a request,shoot me a message.
I'm very passionate about the space and would be very very
happy to to have a discussion with anyone interested in in
more information. And your passion definitely is
reflected in the impact and successes you've had in that
(45:02):
space. And I wish you even more as the
years go on. So thank you very much for
coming on board here today and sharing with us.
My pleasure, Great to see you guys again.
Great to see you too, Sir. And folks, when you get a
chance, please, if you haven't already done so, take a moment
like follow, subscribe, comment on the show, share with us some
(45:22):
ideas about topics and subjects you want us to explore that we
haven't done already. Come on next week and join us
right here where we'll have another guest sharing ideas,
thoughts, best practices and insights from the world of
enterprise software sales. If you would like, you can go to
our website and buy a copy of our book and winning fout faster
(45:44):
the Move framework for enterprise Software sales
success. And you can learn about the the
methodology here Matt and I are referring to.
But for now, that is the end of our show.
Thank you for spending a little bit of time with us.
Matt, thank you very much for coming onto the show again
today. It's always wonderful to see
you. That's you.
(46:05):
And Tamer, thank you again for coming on.
It has been much too long since we sat down and had a
conversation about the business.Can't wait for us to have
another one again. Looking forward to it, thank
you. All right, folks, we will see
you here next week on the same podcast.
Take care.
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