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Hubspot’s Leader for GTM Strategy for Ecosystem Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®
Excited to welcome Barrett King, Hubspot’s Leader for GTM Strategy for Ecosystem joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering us to help you as a Partnership Leader think about Outcomes. Barrett joins us to share, not only his mission and the vital importance of his role at HubSpot, but all the other amazing work he’s doing to nurture our partner led growth and ecosystem led growth strategies for organizations like yours. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion. As much as I enjoyed welcoming, Barrett King.
In Barrett’s Words
Barrett is a highly motivated and results-driven professional with over 10 years of experience in building partnerships and executing go-to-market strategies for SaaS companies. He is skilled in identifying and cultivating new business opportunities, driving revenue growth, and establishing successful sales channels.
Additionally, he’s adept at creating and implementing sales and marketing plans that drive customer engagement and retention. He has a proven track record of exceeding sales targets and delivering results in fast-paced and competitive environments while remaining committed to providing exceptional customer experiences and fostering long-term relationships across the business
What You’ll Learn
- Barrett’s Role at HubSpot (1:10)
- How to Build a Partner Program (6:12)
- An Unconventional Path to Partnerships (14:23)
- Partner Muscle & Principals of Successful Partnering (18:44)
- Start with a Shared Vision for the Customer (23:59)
- Co Selling as Part of the Process (27:55)
- Advice for Partners listening (31:40)
“Winning with Ecosystems” – Now OnDemand
Ultimate Partner’s first live digital event, “Winning with Ecosystems” Is Now Available OnDemand
Why Ultimate Partner?
Over six years ago, I embarked on a mission to empower partners struggling to navigate the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Ultimate Partner, an extraordinary media, events, and advisory company dedicated to transforming your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering Ecosystem Led Growth.
Having witnessed the industry from multiple perspectives – leading a $4.6 billion Ecosystem at Microsoft, spearheading partnerships for a billion-dollar company, and hosting 200 episodes of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® -, I’ve gained invaluable insights and crafted a manifesto of principles to guide your success.
In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead.
Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?”
If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace Ecosystem Led Growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise.
Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos
Barrett King2_RevisedV2
Tue, Jul 25, 2023 12:12PM • 36:59
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
partners, customer, partnerships, hubspot, years, organizations, market, restaurants, work, build, conversation, business, talk, bricks, bit, ag, terms, platform, solution, shared
SPEAKERS
Vince Menzione, Announcer, Barrett King
Vince Menzione 00:00
How a non traditional path to technology can lead to successful outcomes. My next guest and ultimate guide to partnering is hub spots global go to market strategy ecosystem leader, Barrett king, and he joins us to share with our listeners not only his mission and the vital importance of his role at HubSpot, but all the other amazing work he’s doing to nurture our partner led growth and ecosystem led growth strategies for organizations like yours. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion. As much as I enjoyed welcoming, tired King.
Announcer 00:40
This is the ultimate guide to partnering the top partnership podcast. In this podcast Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione.
Vince Menzione 00:59
Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host, and today I will bury King Barrett.
Barrett King 01:10
I’m just beyond pumped to be here and I love your energy. Thanks for having me.
Vince Menzione 01:15
Thank you, I am so excited to welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering. I recently got to be a guest on your amazing show outcomes, which by the way, I love that name. To me, it’s all about outcomes. And I love the work that you’re doing about our shared passion on partnerships, and successful outcomes and partnerships. So welcome.
Barrett King 01:35
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I’m fired up, have a conversation excited to get into with you. And I think what you’re doing is truly unique and special as well. So I’m glad to join the conversation.
Vince Menzione 01:43
I feel equally about the work that you’re doing. So you have a very senior role at HubSpot, which is an organization that I have admired from the outside looking and you’re the global go to market strategy ecosystem leader. And we featured your colleague Kelly Sarabhai and as a guest here on the podcast. But for our listeners who may not know you and your role, can you tell us a little bit more about that your role and mission at HubSpot?
Barrett King 02:10
Absolutely. So let’s go HubSpot first HubSpot to lay the stage is a platform company with a CRM that stacks on marketing sales, customer service and a website solution to that that toolset. I’ve been here for the better part of eight years in and around the partner ecosystem, which is an eternity for those of you that are thinking that is a long time, it is a very long time. And for the last year of that that timeline, I’ve been fortunate to be responsible for how we think about acquisition, and how we think about going up market with partners of tomorrow. And so my core responsibility is specifically to look at who are the right partners for us to continue to engage with how do they align to the things that we’re trying to do as an organization helping millions of companies to grow better, both from a product perspective and then certainly from a go to market lens in terms of how we cosell together how we co service together how we deliver as much value as possible to our end customer. And so a lot of my time is spent cross functionally with marketing and sales with product, certainly with my own team members in the partner community trying to figure out who those partners are, how we engage them, and how to make them successful. You know, finding a partnership is sort of step one, but how do we onboard? How do we set them up to long term, deliver value both to our customer and certainly ROI for themselves as well.
Vince Menzione 03:21
So as you describe that, I think about the broad reach of ecosystem, right? And I think about all the different types of partners, you and I were having a conversation a little bit earlier. When I think about HubSpot and Mar Tech, I tend to lean towards agencies, but that’s only one component right, the long tail. And HubSpot has been incredibly successful there by the way, checkbox. And also you you’re probably looking at some of the other partnership relationships. Some of them were strategics ISP, the ISP, maybe even large strategic to HubSpot. I’m not quite sure. But tell us more about that.
Barrett King 03:58
I think what we did and have done has been very interesting in terms of a journey. Obviously folks around the community have have seen what we’ve been able to develop and execute over the last Gosh, it’s been like 1718 years now that companies around, our ecosystem started out through and I’ll shout out Peekapoo to here, he’s the brilliant mind behind this. And I’ll tell the story my way he would laugh and say it’s not how it happened. But as I understand it, or maybe perhaps believe it to be he was observing that some of our most successful customers are working with marketing agencies. And so through that observation, he engaged with those folks and found that what they were doing was packaging pricing, selling our software as a part of their as a VAR solution as a part of their platform to help a company grow. So we asked we’ll help you with your email marketing, but you’re going to use HubSpot as the platform the system of record if you will for us to do that work. What’s been interesting about the journey is that as we evolve to go from we are an only a marketing platform to we have the sales tools and then a CRM to serve a solution to help services obviously deliver better value to you know, obviously the CMS and the website solution being a part of it now operations are more of a Reb ops tactical platform. On top of that, each of those evolutions in our product required us to think differently around how to enable our partners to grow with us. And so for a long tail part of that timeline, our partners came along for the journey exclusively, only those partners so they were SMB and mid market and lower enterprise size marketing agencies and sales agencies, really SI is to some extent, that evolved alongside HubSpot. And as you continue to evolve that that ecosystem and grow the business, you do see the diversification across the way that we go to market with other organizations. So you mentioned Kelly was on Kelly does a lot of work with our application partners are our partners. So we think differently around, you know, who are thinking really, what are the other solutions that add value to our customer base, and we build a mechanism there, that’s Kelly’s world, certainly, we think about the up market, in terms of what are the other types of organizations that are working with the customers we want to engage with tomorrow. And conversely, the customers that are engaging with us that are larger than our kind of historical ICP, you know, those customers are bringing their own partners to the table as well. So there’s this thing that’s happening as we evolve our business and how we deliver value to our customer base, that we see different types of organizations wanting to work with us. And so I think kind of the land the plane and the story, fundamentally, what we’ve done is keep our ears turned on to what the customer needs. And I think, you know, when folks ask me things like, how do I build a partner program and go back to like, sort of square one, I always start off with what are your customers missing that you need to go and deliver right now? Is it software support is it go to market support is it in our case, it was delivering the the tactical solution itself, both in terms of moving somebody out of the platform, your more traditional si mechanism, but also the ongoing thing, if you will, of doing bunny ears with the thing that you would do with our tool, which is email marketing, or blog production, content production overall. So the marriage of those two intersections both in terms of what we could deliver and value. And what these third parties can deliver in value to our customer, became this nice little triangle of value as I always kind of describe it. Customer comes to us works with a partner gets more value customer goes to partner finds HubSpot through that relationship gets more value. And so the more we can build that flywheel that mechanism, obviously more effective we are at achieving our mission.
Vince Menzione 07:11
Yeah, and I and as you’re speaking about this, I’m thinking about CRM as an example of this, right, because that wasn’t the original intent of the platform. But yet it has become a significant part of the business. And now you’re in new markets, right? You’re, let’s say competing with a Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. And there are partners surrounding those ecosystems or platforms as well that become natural extensions of the HubSpot partner ecosystem.
Barrett King 07:39
That’s part of what you don’t hear, that’s the less glamorous part of growing ecosystem, because your as your own product, go to market changes, and you look to tap into new, certainly revenue streams, like I want to be transparent about that, you know, we’re a software company, we’re trying to grow our revenue. But also, I think, as a product of that, it’s important to remember our core mission, which has helped millions of organizations grow better. And so as we diversify product to solve more customer problems, the businesses that help us solve those problems, they themselves diversified. And so to your point, if you’re listening to the customer base, and the customers that are coming from, you know, specifically CRM, so you’ve got dynamics, you’ve got Salesforce, you’ve got others, when they’re moving from those platforms, or even exploring that move. They’re typically saying, and we’re working with X or Y business, they’re the ones that helped us think about this, or they’re the ones that have always helped us with our technology, solution, architecture, whatever it is, those companies become the next frontier in terms of how do we work with folks tomorrow to ensure again, ultimate goal, our end customer successful, and at the same time, helping to develop the partners that have been with us throughout this journey, being intentional around developing content and enablement and certainly training and certifications to ensure that the customers and the businesses that have already partnered together our existing partner ecosystem that are already close to the problem and have already worked through it, have an opportunity to come together with a new solution whenever we’ve built that point, and also go to market effectively on situs.
Vince Menzione 09:00
It’s a fascinating case study, you mentioned be Kabuto. I mean, he’s, he’s an amazing, I think what he did was you described it right, in terms of how HubSpot got it right, early, right, going after that, that martech market. And then this evolution, like, I wonder now, as you’re discussing this with me, like why are or is it inbound that’s creating the need for the client relationship management solution? Or do clients come in that way as well? And they’re not maybe be more tech organizations?
Barrett King 09:32
I think it’s both Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a part of what happens when you go to, you know, the the world if you will, and you say like, Hey, we have a CRM, but what you’ve already done, I’ll sort of, you know, toot our own horn here, but like, you’ve already built a great marketing platform, and people understand that you’ve got what I think is world class technology around marketing. They pay attention, and I think as a product of that attention that you receive, if you’re not careful, you could very easily Well frankly, kind of screwed up right you could say We want to go head to head with Salesforce, we want to go head to head with Salesforce, does it make sense? There’s no reason to they do what they do very well, they have an exceptional product, we solve for a different market segment, everyone’s aware of that. So we have to really nail is, well, how do you take a CRM that, you know, is still evolving and growing to meet customer needs? And how do you ensure that both the, you know, initial go to market success is present? How do we go and put a message out there that is aligned to the right customer base, but also the other end of the spectrum, which is now that we’ve got this messaging in the market? How do we ensure that that it’s being serviced properly, that’s being delivered properly, that we are kind of finishing the swing on our commitment in that sense, and I think that’s where the 20 year enrollment comes from. I do think some of its inbound like you are going to see and, you know, companies that that change their messaging, when they’ve got reached like we do, you do see an influx of interest to understand what that next thing is for us, obviously, with CRM. You know, the other end of the spectrum is like when we think about what partners then pay attention. I mean, I can say anecdotal, but I’m sure if any of your audience works, you know, a Salesforce partner works at a Microsoft partner works at any other platforms partner, you’re gonna hear the same thing that we have heard from our end, which is like, there’s this other tool that helps my customer, I’m gonna go explore it. And so I think naturally, it’s the inbound mechanism. And it’s just the general interest of the customer base brings to those other ecosystems around exploring, you know, different solutions.
Vince Menzione 11:23
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Barrett King 12:42
Yeah, give you the quickest version possible. But so I, I’ll date myself, I’m 38. I went to school in the kind of mid to late 2000s. graduated high school in 2003. found my way to a state school for a little period of time, totally bored out of my mind ended up at an art school in Florida. super interested in the work that we were doing. And I have a digital arts and design bachelor’s degree, which basically means like I made pretty cool, awesome shit. And then I graduated college and said, What do I do with my life? You know, and it’s 2008. And the market crashed. And so I ended up actually going into restaurants because it was frankly, the only thing I could do. And I was super interested in the idea of like that level of customer service, that level of really frontline customer engagement. That’s how I would describe it as now then it was like this is a cool job. It’s in the city. You know, I moved back home after college, like what do I want to do with my life kind of moment. And I spent I think was about two years in the space. I was also volunteering at my high school to give back a little bit in the media department and just help. And then at night, I was working with a fashion photographer, because I wanted to just do the work that I enjoyed, which was like photo editing and layouts. And I was building magazines. And it was just interesting time. And then I was burned out because restaurants are delightful and wonderful, but an incredibly grueling career choice. And I knew that it wasn’t forever. I left the industry and went into technology for a brief period of time. And then 2010 happened and everyone got laid off again. So I got laid off, and found my way back into restaurants did that for a few more years, opened a few restaurants around Boston just really enjoyed that time in my life. It was very exciting. It was fun, that Gosh, what a grind. It was a lot. And so this is, gosh, about 10 years ago, 11 years ago now, I got out of restaurants full stop. Like I just I literally walked in one day, I was a gem of a spot general manager of a restaurant and just said I can’t do this anymore to the owner. I’m done. I’ll give you my notice. I’m gonna go figure out what’s next in my life. Matt, who’s now one of my best friends a couple weeks later introduced me to a guy who had a tech firm that was selling to restaurants. They were Google backed, and he wanted somebody to come be his sales guy, quote, unquote. What was interesting is up until this point, anything that I had done, you know, had always been specific to people and always been about relationship development and sales to some extent. And so when I joined this startup, I could tell the story of sales and I can tell the story of having restaurant background it was exactly what they needed at the time. I was it was a lightning moment like Right Place Right Time and it struck. But when I look back in height So what I realized is I was actually developing partnerships, because when I was in restaurants, I was a hospitality manager, I was going out to the local businesses to fidelity to whoever else was in the area, and developing these partnerships in terms of what you’re gonna run all of your events through us. We’re gonna do all of your catering, we’re gonna run all your holiday parties. And through that I was, and I look back now I can say this, but I was cultivating partnerships, but I didn’t call it that, because it was just business development. And then it kept going. And when I got into this next, this first, you know, real tech opportunity in terms of the startup, then I was literally developing partnerships, because I was going to, initially one off restaurant operator locations and trying to sell this tool that we had built, it was unique, it was interesting was a category creator. And it was well received, but it wasn’t working at the volume we needed to. So I changed my go to market and I said, I’m gonna go look for large, multi unit restaurant groups, or I’m gonna look for organizations that partner with those folks. And what I ended up doing is working with the initially the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. And then from there, I parlayed that into the National Restaurant Association, which meant I was building partnerships, to say, let us be your premiere solution for this specific thing we did for restaurants. And both of them said, yes, that increased our distribution significantly. And I had not at the time realized again, I was building partnerships. So to land the plane, I joined HubSpot about eight years ago, I was building a book of partners in the beginning and did very well very quick at a time when we were sort of figuring things out. Because we redesigned the program, and was asked to be our first set of sales, training and super fortunate to go and own partner sales training for a couple years, I got to build a program to help other folks joining the business, learn how to partner with organizations, super introspective, really interesting time, my life, I get to travel a bunch and learn a ton about just, frankly, how to work with other businesses. And from there it went, I sort of jumped back into the sales side of it, managing some of our top partner accounts, and helped to build a few of HubSpot stock partners over the next four and a half years. And again, it was interesting, because I parlayed my training and development experience back into how do I help partners grow, spent a bunch of time doing that. And then in the last couple of years, moved over to our corporate team and took the lens of partner to that group helping to figure out how do we go up market with partners, and now again, for the last year, building actual go to market strategy. And so to sort of coalesce all of this into one statement, what I think about when I describe my weird, kind of wacky wandering career is that, you know, throughout my timeline, I was adding Lego bricks to my Lego mat. So I think what the mat is like that green Lego mat that we all have on your kids may build their house on or whatever, right? Yeah, that green Lego mat is like when you graduate college, that was like the last bit of primary education, whatever that is like your your associate’s or your doctorate. And then you might have a couple of Legos on there, you might have a few bricks, if maybe you had a focus, I was a, you know, math major, or I was a lawyer, whatever you want to be. And some folks take those bricks, and they keep playing the same color, the same shape, and they make their stack very, very tall. And they’re very happy with that I was the opposite. I covered my mat in every type of Lego I could get my hands on, and I never organized it, it was just this pile of bricks. And what I learned as I get older and I got further my career is I could actually start to reorganize those bricks, and stack them in a way that would let me go and stand on top of them. And so now I think about as having a pyramid. And what I can do is draw from those different brick colors and shapes, those different experiences, to bring together into conversations and into moments where I need to solve a problem, all of that context that background, those experiences to a place where I don’t know how there’s like kind of disarray of bricks, but I have a bit of a tower. And it’s more of a pyramid. And that’s okay, because I’ve got some range, a little bit depth and width across it. And so when folks asked me, How did I get here, I sort of laugh generally and genuinely and say like, I don’t know, I just solve problems. That’s what I enjoy doing. But at its core, it’s always been about relationships with people and developing that dynamic that I now know as partnerships.
Vince Menzione 18:44
I think about your your stack of bricks, and I go okay, there was some there’s some core DNA there around partnerships, right, there’s something about your background, your where your passion, I feel like we have a shared passion here on this. And it propelled me in this direction as well. And then as you laid the bricks that DNA had had helped really assemble where they stood, right, you didn’t go straight up a stack like the you weren’t an attorney, you weren’t an account and follow up exactly. People that do those jobs for 30 or 40 years. Like I don’t know how they do that, right. And I love having all these different experiences, and then bringing it all together. And that’s what you’ve done, right? You’ve taken you’ve taken some, you’ve built some core muscle that you’ve taken freely from each job to the next each role to the next. And that core muscle is strengthened over time. And that’s what you’re, you’re sharing that that shared experience in that core muscle now and what you’re doing is why I read it.
Barrett King 19:35
Yeah, I think you’re spot on. And I think being conscious of that as the most important part. You know, it’s really easy to go and say, I did this as a moment in time. But the more you can take, you know the thread of what took place and pull it forward, the more interconnected the whole thing becomes.
Vince Menzione 19:50
And that muscle keeps getting stronger and stronger. It’s it’s there. Exactly, yep. So we have this shared mission, right. And I love what you’re doing. on the podcast, tell our listeners a little bit more about your podcast because I want them to listen. And we’re gonna put a link to in our show notes.
Barrett King 20:06
Well, it’s great. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so the show, it’s called outcomes. And it is about conversations with operators that had been there and done the work and have a story to tell about it. You know, what I did is I, you know, frankly, I selfishly wanted to have conversations with really smart people like yourself, right? It’s while you’re on the show, I want to learn from them. And I realized the further I got down these conversations in the beginning, the more I realized that I could help others by sharing that as well. And so I’ve really focused on easy to consume super tactical outcomes, like the show was called, From operators that have a bit of a context of a story of background to share. And it’s, it’s short, it’s meant to be 10 minutes or less. In terms of the clip, most episodes that I record tend to be between 17 and 22 minutes in total. And it’s cutting into pieces. So when you’re running between meetings, or pick up, the kids are waiting for your show to start, like you can take seven to 10 minutes, and you can listen to an episode and get something to take away with it.
Vince Menzione 20:58
I love it. I love the fact that it’s bite size. And
Barrett King 21:02
simple. I don’t want to look, I don’t have an hour, I wish I had an hour to sit down and listen to something and learn I don’t I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m busy with work, I’ve got hobbies, I’ve got 1000 things going on, my friends always laugh and say I don’t know how you do all of that. And I still fit in a little bit of time to learn. And I do that through micro content as I describe it. So I want to sit in that niche and help people very quickly and tactically learn something.
Vince Menzione 21:23
And I want to do the same here, we’re gonna do in a little bit longer format, obviously, I tried to keep it under 30 minutes. But you know, when you have as Ultimate Guide to partnering, I believe there’s a set of principles around well make successful partnering, and I’d love to hear from you. If there are a set of principles that you follow, or things that you believe are aren’t taught to people out there about what makes successful partnerships,
Barrett King 21:45
I think it’s people first, you know, it’s really easy business to get focused on KPIs and and you know, all your goals and your revenue. And I just I like to start off and keep it really simple and say we’re two people all trying to make a living, we have a family or friendships or otherwise, what are the human parts of this, that really anchor in what we’re doing this for? I do think ROI is important. I do make it about an outcome, not to repeat the show title. But it really is about an outcome in that sense. And what I mean is like, you know, your, your earliest conversations with this prospect, this potential partner, you know, should be about, why are we doing this? Now, you know, what does, what is the investment look like? Certainly, and like, what’s the goal that we have, in terms of how you, as a business, choosing to work with me are going to win and vice versa? How am I going to win as well, I think the third piece is like have something specific, not just in terms of a goal, but it’s measurable. And it might feel obvious, but I’ve talked to a lot of partnership, folks, in my last couple years in the business, and everyone always talks about, it’s like usually like, how do we sell more, right? Like, that’s great, I get that you want to go in and sell more. But it can be more than that. Why don’t we go to market together and change the world? You know, like, well, let’s keep it really distilled down in simple. I think measurable is the best way to describe that in terms of having some sort of a core KPI. And the other thing is just really, you know, building some sort of a cadence in the conversation. So like, how do you want to be communicated with what’s the best way to to establish a dialogue with somebody because, you know, there’s, I had Blake Williams onto my show is a very long time ago, one of my earliest guests, and he made a comment about, you know, your best partners own your customers trust, you get an opportunity to borrow that trust, add something to it, and deliver it back to them through those partners and I just rember sitting there and hearing him going Wow, man, that’s, that’s so smart. That’s powerful. That is super powerful. I appreciate that comment. And, and I think anchoring in, you know, the value is the most important. So I’ll talk about that value triangle earlier of like who we are, who are the businesses adding value to our customer? And how do we work with those folks to create this kind of momentum. HubSpot calls it a flywheel, and in the business itself, I think with the partners themselves, it comes back to shared value, shared outcomes, shared experience, and creating a mechanism to deliver that in a cyclical way, and continue to try and grow that opportunity. That’s the best foundational way to build a program. I love
Vince Menzione 23:59
what you have to say here, but shared shared vision and values super, super important. Like why are we here together? Like what are we trying to solve for what’s the better together? And you know, you talked about KPIs. And I like to apply OKRs John Doerr talked about OKRs, he applied them to Google. Google started, and now everybody’s using OKRs. But specifically, like when we get together when we have that Cadency, you talked about, like, are we taking a look at what we’re trying to do? And aspirationally? What are we trying to do? Right? So maybe maybe on a marketing side or branding side, it’s like, how do we show up together in the market? Like, what’s that going to look like? Is that going to be like our two leaders up on stage together, talking about a shared vision for success for our, our common customers? Or is it just going to be some KPIs around marketing? Specifically, right?
Barrett King 24:46
I think it’s what matters to the customer. You know, like a lot of what I hear folks talk about is what’s in it for me, obviously, naturally, we’re human beings. I think if you can focus each of those dialogues on what’s in it for the customer, you’re doing the right thing. You’re asking the right question, anchoring in We talked about performance over time, too, it’s really easy to focus on 100 feet, right on our feet down the road, what’s in front of you? I think, for me at least, that’s why you hear QBR a lot, you hear these kind of bigger perspective conversations. I think having a daily, weekly, monthly focus is valuable. I think having a quarterly check in is important. I think having a yearly and multi year intent is probably the most valuable component of a true longtail value partnership.
Vince Menzione 25:27
I am so with you on this the three, you know, at least three years out, like what’s the vision for
Barrett King 25:31
the future? Yep.
Vince Menzione 25:34
So I’m going to ask the opposite or the inverse of this question. Right. So we talked about what makes successful partnerships, what about the partnerships that have failed that you’ve seen fail? Like, was there a Kryptonite that got in the way of those partnerships?
Barrett King 25:46
Yeah, this is probably the easiest one for me to answer because it, it’s one of the more common themes that comes up. So I will just call this person a leader of a partner program, I’ll just keep it super, super neutral. I somebody recently say to me, when I think about kicking off like this next stage of growth, one of the things I really care about is that our partners drive as much revenue as possible. Like sort of smiled, and I was like, okay, cool. And what are you doing for that revenue? And, and they were like, Oh, we’re just gonna, we’re gonna help them grow their businesses, like, Oh, you’re gonna have like a consulting arm of that organization? And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, they’re gonna use our software to grow. It’s like already, like, you’re just looking for them to sell your software, you don’t really think about that. The me statements, the obvious, is a early sign of problem. That’s sort of like the shakiness in the relationship, the all about me components, they’re going to do this for me, even as the way you talk about it. In fact, Joe Riley was on my show on point. And we talked about language and the impact of specific word choice. When he talks about the dynamic you’re establishing with a potential and then obviously a partner once they work with you, and how often and I would describe this diagnostically. But, you know, SAS organizations, for example, that work with partners typically want some sort of an output from that relationship. And what they need to focus on is the first piece, which is, by working with us, the SAS organization, these partners gain X, Y, or Z value. And if you can look at that and draw correlation between the investments those partners make with you, and the outputs of that resulting value, then you win. So then, let’s take the opposite of that. That I think is the kryptonite. I think when you hear organizations talk about me, me, me, and I don’t build the infrastructure, the education, the sharing, it’s necessary to enable those partners to win alongside it’s really easy to do the like the kind of churn and burn thing you see a lot of companies do they come in hot, sign a bunch of partnerships. And then those partners don’t get true fundamental value beyond maybe the first six to nine to 12 months, and they turn out. And then two years later, when they burn through 1000s of partners, that organizations as well, what are we doing wrong, we made all about you, and you didn’t take away education, you didn’t spend time helping those companies or listening to them or caring about them. That’s the other side of this equation that I think ultimately, when you can anchor in, you avoid that pitfall that kryptonite moment,
Vince Menzione 27:55
I think about CO selling in that respect, right? When you make it about truly co selling as a part in this, and I’m going back to like the old channel models too. And I think about this, like we’re gonna lob off a little piece of our business. And we’re gonna give it to a partner or a group of partners to go after like, we’re gonna give New Zealand and Australia and let them make Hey there because we don’t have we don’t want to even focus there, and then hope they do something like sell for us. Yeah. And I think about that mentality, that mindset that you described, that can apply geographically, it could apply to just in general about the approach you have to partners. I love what you have to say there. So I love asking this question and sort of a way to get at, like what makes you tick and who you admire, but you’re hosting a dinner party bear, and you can host this party anywhere in the world. And we discuss locations in a while here. But you can invite any three guests to this amazing dinner party from the present or the past. Whom would you invite, and why?
Barrett King 29:00
Well, I have to invite you, they ultimately you’re going to provide a really awesome perspective on hyper scalar and and all of that if we talk about partnerships, right? I can say I would invite someone like even Dharmesh he always comes to mind when people ask me a question like this Dharmesh was the co founder CTO of HubSpot. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant human being really smart in terms of how he built HubSpot technology stack. I like him from an investment perspective. I think he’s got something interesting to say there. You know, if we’re talking purely professional, I would go a different route if we’re talking about the most entertaining an interesting conversation possible. I think then it starts to open up the aperture quite a bit more. I would probably bring in like an actor or actress somebody like maybe like Leonardo DiCaprio. If I wanted to go with somebody like kind of funky and interesting and maybe a little bit weird. Or like Glenn Close, who’s had an incredible career and a long devotee to her. I could go the other end of the spectrum and say like someone like Elon Musk because he’s got a real fascinating way of thinking about you know, certainly anything technology centric could go controversial. I’d say like Joe Rogan, who’s got like probably one of the most, I think it is still the number one podcast in the world and has been plethora of like interesting guests that have joined. I think for me, you know, when I think about that dinner party, you’re gonna laugh, perhaps, but I go to the food first. Like, I’m sitting here saying, Where are we like, hopefully, we’re on a mountain top overlooking a valley with like, really, really good, you know, high quality wine around the table, and some incredible craft cocktails. Funny, I don’t drink anymore, either. But I just think about that as like a poor part of it with food that was been curated by somebody who, like took the kind of mindfulness of building something from scratch, they planted a head of lettuce, and they cultivated it and they grew it, I think, what, for me to really anchor in your question, what matters is good conversation with good people, and good food to fuel that dialogue. And so I could bring people from past present and future to that in a variety of of lenses to curate the most interesting conversation possible, but it anchors in, you know, where the experience happens and how we consume, you know that that entire kind of front end back to back timeline.
Vince Menzione 31:12
I’m all in you said I’m invited. So I’m sitting here on the top of the mountain, I’m thinking to myself, we were either in Napa. Yeah. We weren’t in Napa Sonoma. Or maybe we’re like in Italy, or the south of France, like
Barrett King 31:25
Italy first? Yeah. Yeah. That was my first choice. In my head. I pictured something. Yeah, there’s like some grape vines growing over the top of the trellis that were sitting under our old like wrought iron table. It’s very natural.
Vince Menzione 31:36
I’m ready to go back. And we’re having that conversation. So let’s plan it. And I also have not been drinking, I gave up drinking. I haven’t shared this on the podcast. So I’m probably going to share this for the first time. But I gave up drinking almost almost a year ago.
Barrett King 31:49
About a year actually, I think, I think July is a year I go back and forth. My wife, I think, a year, August. Yeah. Yeah, I just, it’s funny, I won’t have to spend time on this. But I, I have a young kiddo, he’s, he’s four and a half my wife and I have had an interesting last couple of years, kind of pre and through pandemic times. And what we realized one day was that didn’t really love how we were feeling. And it was just started with, like, Let’s do, I think I said, I’m going to do two weeks. And she was like, you know, sure, she didn’t really drink a lot. But it was just a part of, you know, for everyone, I think through COVID, but just part of our lifestyle. And then a week to three a month, two months, we started to work on our we had a really great gym regimen, we have a fitness that we kind of center, if you will, that we built in our basement. So we’ve got a space there. And then we looked at what we were eating start to improve that. And I’ll tell you I’m those of you can see me right now I was 25 and a half pounds heavier in November of last year. Wow, wild, I had no idea that much weight on me. And yeah, and so I feel better than I ever have. I’m sharper. And that’s why I can talk about going to Italy, I wouldn’t even consume the cocktails, I might have a sip of wine just for the principle of being there. But it’s the food and conversation that would drive through,
Vince Menzione 32:58
it would be hard not to at least have a sip or two. Or two, we could talk about all the amazing non alcoholic beverages out there as well. But that we could say that maybe we’ll have another episode where we just talk about
Barrett King 33:11
my journey, we’ll do food and beverage. And there we go. I love it.
Vince Menzione 33:14
I love what you’ve been an amazing guest Barrett, I really love what you have to say about partnerships. I just think as an overall human being and the work that you’re doing, and just delighted to get to know you a little bit better. So as we wind down the conversation today, and this has been a year we we’ve seen a lot of headwinds, right, we talked about COVID kind of accelerated a lot of things going on in the tech sector. And then the last year so like these economic headwinds, where everybody’s trying to do more with less organizations are pulling back funding, or they’re holding on to the cash that they raised in the last round. What advice do you have for our listeners on optimizing their success for the remainder of this year?
Barrett King 33:52
I think it’s, it’s probably more simple than, well, I’m going to make it sound more simple than it is. And that would be first and foremost, to listen to your customers. there’s anything else that I’ve learned in the last couple of years, really the last like five or 10 years of my career, it’s that your customers will tell you what you are not doing well. They’ll tell what you’re doing. Well, you got to ask the right questions. And so I think keeping a very clear pulse on your customers, everyone wants to listen to the market with the market saying what’s, you know, CNBC put up this morning, okay, those are perhaps indicators of what may or may not happen far down the road. And by far, I mean, like that could be hours away. But what’s happening right now in your organization, your customers will give you feedback on if you’re a leader, marketing sales, CES, CEO, CTO, whoever you should be meeting with your customers every single week. And you should supplement that with partnerships. If you don’t have a partnerships mechanism in your business. You’re missing out. No, I’m preaching to the choir with you. I know we’re on the same page. There’s a lot of leaders I’ve talked to they’re saying our partnerships the way of the future. I think, inbound, think outbound, you’ve heard folks use the term near bound. I don’t think it’s a word. I think it’s the way people want to buy. I can appreciate terminology to be clear, but I think what’s happened and what I’ve observed is that people have become more educated, they’ve had more access to information, they’ve had more access to each other. And through that shift in the way buyers behavior has evolved, it’s more important than ever that we actually specifically, listen to them, not try and do the you will buy you should use etc. I think the way that you win in 2023 and a half, to the kind of end of the 2030s will be my guess is probably like a seven to 10 year journey here. You invest in the businesses that are already close to your customer. And certainly as partnerships, you listen to those customers and through that listening, look for ways to adapt, and evolve and overcome, and try and really enable the best possible outcomes, the best possible experience and ROI and value for those customers staying close to the problems they have, obviously, and engaging with the businesses that are already around them, helping to solve and provide solutions.
Vince Menzione 35:52
Yeah, I love what you have to say. And we could go on about why that’s so important, like the surround of the customer, and the trust. And the five seats at the table is Jamie McBain likes to talk about right because it isn’t just one person influencing it’s it’s how we organize around solving for the customer. And being part of that conversation helping to drive that mutual success or the that set of outcomes that the customer wants is just so critical. It’s brilliant. Yep. Super, super excited to have you Barrett and to continue our friendship. Thanks so much for joining today.
Barrett King 36:26
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you. It’s been fun. I look forward to next conversation.
Vince Menzione 36:29
Take care, same year. And we know we’re going to talk about next time. All the things.
Announcer 36:35
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partnering