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Listen as Vince Menzione Kicks Off LIVE in Dallas
Building an event from scratch in 100 days is not for the faint of heart. I am incredibly grateful to everyone involved in the process. The friends who said “just do it”, the team in Las Colinas, the experts who came on the team, the sponsors who placed blind faith in my ability to fill the room, and the hundreds or perhaps thousands who cheered us on and helped fill the venue.
I’m excited to release this keynote from Ultimate Partner LIVE. I wish you all could have been in the room to feel the energy, the excitement, and the spark around partnerships and igniting the ecosystem. It was electric. We will be sharing select sessions such as this one with our listeners and hope you join Ultimate Partner Experience to watch all the sessions and experience more!
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What You’ll Learn
- Partnering for business success with industry insights.0:00
- Partnering with Microsoft for success.4:48
- Partnering with Microsoft and driving growth.9:20
- Technology transformation and partnerships.14:28
- Embracing marketplace growth and partner-led ecosystems.19:04
Why Ultimate Partner?
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world of unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information designed to unlock your full potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals.
Our journey began nearly seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner is a beacon dedicated to revolutionizing your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering ecosystem-led growth through this experience platform, including digital and live events, advisory services, and much more.
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.
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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos
UP Live Event – Vince Menzione…t kickoff – Full Length Audio
Thu, Jan 04, 2024 12:16PM • 24:23
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
partner, microsoft, talk, ecosystem, marketplace, leaders, people, organizations, room, event, candidly, podcast, call, business, sponsors, company, opportunity, pivot, successful, inspire
SPEAKERS
Vince Menzione, Announcer
Announcer 00:00
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 00:21
Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host, and in November of 2023 30, leaders congregated to a packed house of partners to help spark the ecosystem in this time of rapid change and transformation. If you were there in person, you felt the electricity and excitement in the room. But if you couldn’t join us in person, I still wanted to share this incredible rich content with you here. So I hope you enjoy this amazing session, as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you. I want to thank all of you, from the bottom of my heart for being here. I can’t tell you how important this is. And what an amazing moment this is. As we each find our purpose and our mission, I just want to welcome you this event is live the Americas version and sparking the ecosystem for a reason. Because my passion and mission is around this remelt did a great job on the tee up. But I’ve described my career as for successful business transformations. See, I didn’t start at Microsoft. I did a startup in the early days of wireless computing. We took the company from 6 million to 120. We went public on the Toronto exchange. I then did a turnaround the Golden Gate capital had spun out of a chapter 11 We grew that business exponentially. That’s where I built my first partner ecosystem. We didn’t call it ecosystem back then, by the way, don’t my first partner channel. I was the growth engine in that company. And then I was recruited by Microsoft, by a woman by the name of Linda Secor. And for almost a decade, I was what we now call ecosystem, I was the leader of the public sector, partner business, Microsoft, and then also an adjunct member and then a direct member of the US partner leadership team. So I got to be really involved in Microsoft, they’re all levels and understand how the engine works in many respects. And when I left the organization, I had always known that partners struggled, they still struggled today, I’m sure we have conversations out in the hallways, everyone loves Microsoft. But it’s not easy, right? We know that. And that’s why we’re bringing everybody together today. We’re trying to help accelerate your success. This is what ultimate partner live is all about. It’s about accelerating your success. It started off with a podcast. But when I started the podcast seven years ago, when I left Microsoft, it was seven years ago last month, I started a podcast with a vision of getting to this moment and hopefully accelerating it from here. And the reason why is I recognized that you needed the easy button, you needed the decoder ring in order to drive your greatest results. And I saw the partners that got it right. And in fact, I started interviewing them on the podcast, and I understood Microsoft understood how to direct them. But they needed additional guidance. And being that lighthouse, that guide was where ultimate partners and ultimate partner guide ultimate partner started what Michael had to say here about aligning your purpose and mission, I think hopefully resonates with everyone in the room because Microsoft has this big bold mission. And I think we all have an opportunity whether we’re only Microsoft partners, that we’re partners with other tech giants to align our mission and our vision for success around at and my mission is to help organizations like yours leaders like you, individuals and your organizations to achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Now, I don’t have all the answers. And I don’t I don’t I don’t say that I do. But I do have I know who the people are, that can help you get the answers. And that’s what this is all about. And that’s why we’ve assembled this meeting today the summit, and we’re going to talk about some of the steps here we’re going to talk about how we got here, we’re going to talk about our amazing sponsors and speakers. This rich agenda over the next two days, I don’t think you’ll have ever seen an agenda like this in one room. And I’m really just proud and grateful for all the people all the great leaders who come together to to be here. I want to first start with our sponsors are believers, the people who came forward, it was only 120 days ago that we said we’re gonna go do this. And it’s been a it’s been a long journey, believe it or not only 90 or 120 days. But these were the organizations that came forward and said we believe partners need the help. They need the guidance. We need to get together in person again, like this. We love digital events. I hosted a digital event we’ll talk about that. But this was an opportunity for everyone to show up in a big way. Microsoft came on in a big way became the title sponsor for the event. We’re expand say Age came on in a big way carve, ey BDO, partner tap, and archive 360. All came on as Title sponsors, and then the community who joined us in the room, some of some in the room, some not in the room. And we’ll talk about that community more through the sessions here. So I want to thank all all of those sponsors round of applause for those sponsors, by the way. Some amazing friends and believers. And I want to thank, wow, I asked a lot of people, like I knew, and what I hope I am doing here is bringing together for you what I believe to be the right people, as if we had done this as a podcast, in fact, but bring that the people in the room who can help you decode what success looks like, tell you the what and the why. But more importantly, the how to achieve your greatest results. What you need to go do in Microsoft fiscal year 24. And beyond, in order to achieve your greatest success working with Microsoft, working with the leaders here, we’ve had some amazing support. It started with a gentleman by the name of Kevin peacemaker, who you will meet later today. If you didn’t meet him last night, if you were at the reception, hopefully you got to see Kevin, he has been he’s drives an amazing book of business at Microsoft. He’s a president of the SMC business, and you’ll get to know him better. He’s got an incredible passion around growing with partner led growth and partner assisted growth. And he has been a big supporter from day one. That’s one of the reasons why we came to Las Colinas to support his townhall yesterday, and to align you all and with with his sellers. You see, we used to do things like this, right? We used to get people together, we get the sellers with the partners, we do that at Inspire we do that and other events, co selling events. We’ve been doing a lot of that digitally. And I get it we’ve had we had COVID, we’ll talk about the years we’ve had, it’s time, it’s time to bring it back live. And we’re going to do it here today. So I wanted to give you an idea of been asked a lot of people say who’s coming, who’s coming. And I really wanted a slide with all of your logos up here. But candidly, we couldn’t pull that together as quickly. But I want to thank each of you for your commitment for coming here. And being in the room. I know some of you have traveled cross country to be here. And from other locations, some some are local to Dallas, Pam, and others, and so excited to have you all in the room. But this is kind of a breakup or breakdown of who’s in the room. Right? A very large group of CSPs. We have most of the large solution partners in the room. Right? So if you’re, you know, the LSPs are there category of partners, the biggest organizations that are resellers, systems integrators now transforming their businesses that are in the room, we have a group of ISVs in the room of significant group of ISPs, a lot of SI guys in the room, a lot of companies that classify themselves as that size. And then a group of others that’s made up of organizations that didn’t classify themselves in a certain way, maybe feel they go across multiple swim lanes. That’s very true of everybody. And then also people from Microsoft and other sponsors and others that are here with us today. 270 was the capacity that we had in the room, and we reached our capacity for this event. So I want to thank everyone for joining us. I talked a little bit about this. I had been blessed to have so many amazing friends. Many of them have been guests on Ultimate Guide to partnering. It all started. When I left Microsoft and I had a coach you said you should do a podcast. And I was like what this podcast I was starting to listen to podcasts at that time. This is back I finally got an iPhone SE said it was okay to get an iPhone. And because Steve used to jump on them back in the day, I got an iPhone and started listening to Tim Ferriss and a few other podcasts. And this friend said you should do a podcast and so I asked like a dozen people. And some of them were early guests. And I said what do you think I should and I said well do this thing around partnering it’s I could help these organizations and I could we could at scale provide because even at that point Microsoft only had certain moments when you could learn about how to be successful right there was WPC became Inspire. And then maybe there’d be some other event like DTA or third event. But it was only at those touch points that partners got to hear from the tech giant. And then I also wanted you all to understand from leaders that had won an award winning partners like what did the best do I knew I knew because I was I was on the other side of the room and would meet with all these partners, right and I got to see what success looked like what the best of the best did and what they did differently and I wanted to instill that in everyone and so that’s what Ultimate Guide to partnering started out as candidly went on a went on a little bit of a hiatus. You see, I wasn’t sure where it was gonna go. i This was my vision all along, but I went back inside For two years, I went back into the largest software company in the nonprofit sector billion dollar business as their channel chief. And then I got to see from the other side, again, how organizations struggled. You see, if you work in a big company, not everybody is partner centric, not everybody’s on board, right. And I have a set of principles, operating principles. We all get it, because that’s why we’re here. But not everybody gets it. And sometimes the chief revenue officer doesn’t get it. And sometimes the CEO doesn’t get it. And sometimes the CEO, certainly the CFO doesn’t want to invest in it. And your chief marketing officers running around doing things that don’t include partners. Like, that’s crazy, right, but that’s the way our world operates. And that’s what I am on a mission to help change with all of you. And we’re going to continue to build content and support and an organization that helps you drive your greatest results. And today is day one of that. So ultimate partner has morphed. We started out this year, knowing that we wanted to get to this point. We did a couple of things. We moved the podcast more into a master class, we’d interview a bunch of leaders from organizations and try it and if you go, tell them to partner up, you type masterclass, you’ll see a bunch of episodes I did with Microsoft’s America’s had their Dagens was one of those guests, because I wanted to help you decode, like, how do you work with the tech giant, by the way, it’s not just the partner development manager, I need to work across the entire organization, I need to understand all the touch points that touch my customer. And then, you know, how do I decode that? And how do I become more successful navigating the tech giant, and then also all of these amazing guests, we decided to do a digital event, I really wanted to host an event in Seattle around inspire this, this, this more from from Seattle. The challenge with doing something around inspire, candidly, is it was all pre recorded. It was recorded weeks ahead. So in the June Microsoft event is like the middle of July, weeks ahead, it was all pre recorded. And a lot of people were leaving for vacation or going off to other trips and ventures and things. So it was impossible to pull all the leaders back in the room to after they heard what they said it inspire and bring them back in the room and say, Okay, now how do I make this successful? We couldn’t do that. We couldn’t do that in Seattle, at least in that timeframe. And it was risky. And so Rommel and I had been talking about this location, and then this opportunity came up. So what you’re gonna get in the next two days, is really a little bit of what happened did inspire, take into you in person, you’re going to hear from the leaders of Microsoft, I mean, this is an amazing lineup, you’re going to get to interact and have conversations with them about what success looks like, you’re going to be able to give them feedback on what Microsoft needs to do better and differently, going into their new fiscal year, or maybe even in the second half of this year. Second semester, this is your opportunity, this is your moment to help drive the growth of this ecosystem be part of this thing. And that’s what we’re all about today with ultimate partner live. What an amazing agenda. I mean, I couldn’t have somebody, I had a conversation with somebody about a week ago, who was new to the partner world knew nothing about Microsoft’s when are you going to throw another one of these another month or so that’s like, wait a second, this commitment, by the way to have the commitment from so many leaders, presidents, corporate vice presidents and Microsoft to come to Dallas, in the middle of the week before Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving, and have a meeting like this is unheard of. It’s crazy. It’s crazy, all the leaders and you’re going to have a rich day of content. Today, you’re going to learn more than you probably have ever known about how Microsoft operates at the Americas level at the ISP level, you’re gonna hear from a leader Dan Rippy, who knows how to make it real. He’s just amazing and amazing friend, he’s been a guest on the podcast. He was part of another event I did a year ago. You’re gonna Of course, we’re taking Microsoft’s priorities for this year, right. So if you look at what was talked about inspire, there was a lot of other things that were talked about. But if you’d had to boil it down to three things, there are three major priorities within the organization, of course, AI marketplace, and this amazing opportunity around the SMC business, right. Those are the three things if you don’t come away from anything else, you’ll know that the event is structured around those three things. And bringing the leaders of those three things in the room is just remarkable. And I couldn’t do this without their support. So I just want to thank them for their support and being here in the room. And thank you so much. To me, I’ll rattle off Heather and Alvarado and Felice and Dan and I mean it’s an Anthony Joseph and we have it’s, it’s gonna be incredible couple of days. I hope you I hope you feel the energy and, and be part of this in such a big way. I want to spend a few minutes here you see, this is also why we got here. We’re living in a time like no other right. I can’t emphasize this enough. We you know, we’re In this, I call it the tectonic shifts if you go back to 19 2019. I mean, our world is radically changed since that time, right? We all live through COVID COVID. Accelerated technology advancement, right? A lot of bad things happen because of COVID. A lot of loss, but it also accelerated, Satya Nadella said that we saw seven years of transformation for seven months, other leaders have talked about how our lives have changed, right? I mean, we all just hit hit the button on our phone three times, and a box shows up at the end of the day. And we do that every day. I mean, I get Amazon deliveries twice a day, sometimes society is changing. We’re going through geopolitical time, like no other two wars. In fact, just a very sad time in terms of what’s happening in that part of the world. We’ve been going through economic headwinds, right, we’ve had massive success in terms of technology transformation. But we’ve also had the headwinds, the pullback, because everybody over invested over pivoted during COVID and then had a pullback, massive layoffs, technology companies, the technology sector hit worse than any other honestly, right, the rest of the economy has been cranking along. And because of that, we’ve had to do more with less, right? Our organizations may be scaled down, and maybe you’re doing the job of two people, or Microsoft got rid of its partner development managers, because they also laid off people. And by the way, this isn’t just Microsoft, it’s Amazon. It’s Google. And it’s, you know, you go down the list, Facebook, Facebook, and so on. Everybody did this. Some of them I’ve hired back, some of them have reappropriated resources. But the truth is, we’ve all been living with this. And then also this, like there was this comfortable notion like, oh, yeah, I have a partner developer. And then I’m sure I do this thing. And now you have to do it alone. Or you have to find other ways to do it. You have to be creative. You have to be entrepreneurial in your spirit in the way you go about your business. People are finally rail realizing though co selling is super important. And Microsoft recognizes this in a big way. And some of the shifts they’ve done with marketplace. There are if you don’t know this, there are $300 billion dollars and durable cloud budgets amongst the Big Three $300 billion. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are at the CFO level, negotiating massive contracts with the largest customers. They’re also doing that, by the way, in the SMC special hear about that from Kevin today. Opportunity. Because I remember years ago people said why don’t have to cosell with Microsoft. They don’t do anything. They don’t sell anything for us. Right? I got to report all this back. No, there’s a huge opportunity now and marketplace is the way to get there. And a lot of you in the room are resisting it. I know because I talk to all of you marketplace is the non fungible token, if you know what an NF t is, it’s the it’s the non fungible token. It’s the ability to take what we used to do with pieces of paper and proposals and budget together and all this paper process and getting our systems to talk to one another are CRMs and are our partner center and all that it takes all the friction out of the system or takes a lot of the friction out of the system. It also allows you to do what Microsoft has always called partner to partner, which I now call ecosystem like growth, which is why we’re here because there’s opportunities for all of you, you still on the pie chart to work together more effectively. I don’t want to burst your bubble. You’re not the only person your customers talking to. And Microsoft people. You’re not the only person your customers talking to your customers talking to at least seven seats at the table. My good friend Jane McBain from Canalis, who has been a big supporter and advisor to ultimate partner likes to talk about the seats at the table. You see we make the decision to buy today, as technologists or as people implementing a solution the same way we buy a vehicle. Like when I went out and got my jeep, I called all my friends that had jeeps and I asked them like what do you think about the hybrid model and you talk to the people that you trust the seats at your table, and you make your decision and the other partners that at that table are influencing your customer. So why not work together? Right, this is what partnering is all about. And by the way, the customer is not buying just a point solution. They’re stitching together a business solution to a problem that they’re trying to solve. And that problem may include one ISV to ISVs, it might include a security partner, it might need an implementation partner, it’s going to need all of those resources coming together right to drive that one solution in and marketplace helps drive that. By the way marketplace. There are a few marketplace vendors in the room organizations that deliver software, one of them will expand as a sponsor of this event. And but there are a couple of others in the room that that are also in this this part of the world that’s growing and accelerating predictions around marketplace. We’re all saying like why do I have to do this marketplace offer? Nobody sees it. Nobody’s gonna buy off of my marketplace solution like why am I doing this? That’s how you get to the durable cloud budgets. That’s how customers this is going to be. It’s going to change things. People don’t like change, right? We resist change. I got up on a stage 12 years ago and talked about the cloud opportunity in front of a bunch of channel partners that looked at me glaze eyed and said, I’m not ready for the cloud. We don’t why do we? Why do we want to sit? We want to sell PCs and targets begs, why do we want to go to the cloud? Well, guess what’s happened to that industry? Yeah, this is what’s happening with marketplace in a big way. So the predictions, and I’ve had several guests on my podcast talking about this $45 billion by 2025. That’s a low estimate of how much revenue will go through marketplaces. That’s analysis. Early estimate. Jay McBain from Canalis, said we under called it I had he and other leaders on an episode and we talked about it 50 is probably still under cutting it. And in fact, tackle who just released their survey has predicted $100 billion will flow through marketplaces by the end of 2026. That’s three years from now. 100 billion dollars. CrowdStrike is already doing a billion dollars through marketplaces, that tells you that it’s an opportunity for growth, it’s another channel, it’s another route to market. It’s not the only route to market. But if you don’t embrace this moment, and this is Microsoft’s marketplace moment, this year, you’ll hear much more about this over the next two days. You need to embrace we need to pivot you need to understand it. My again, Jay, he’s not even here. But because he’s hosting his own event. Canalis is having their conference in Palm Springs this week. I couldn’t plan the timing of this any better. But he’s called this the decade of the ecosystem. And I I’ve embraced this deck this ecosystem LED or this partner led growth model, because I believe we used to call partner to partner but it never did it justice, right. We talked about the seven seats. There’s one ecosystem by the way, you’re all part of this ecosystem. 1981, Bill Gates went to Boca Raton, Florida. And that’s what started the ecosystem. Now if you know what happened, he signed an agreement with IBM to license his software to IBM, not sell his software license it and they also license the PC components so that companies like Dell, and Compaq, and CW and other makers and resellers could come to become businesses, right. And that didn’t really exist in a big way Microsoft has was that really created it spark the ecosystem in 1981, whether it even recognizes it to this day it did it. And that ecosystem is now over 400,000, strong, representing all of you, and you know, another 399,700 or something that aren’t in this room, but are recognized in the Microsoft ecosystem. This movement is real, it’s all going to be about partner to partner, which means working more closely with the tech giant means working more closely with each other, which is why you’re all in the room. Because there’s opportunities for partner to partner. And you know, one of the big things I get from people when we talk about not going to inspire not having an Inspire is you would walk the hallway in Vegas. And at the end of those three days, your your business, your book of business, your your your strategy for the year was planned. And you can’t do that digitally, candidly. So that’s why we’re here. And that’s where we’re going to continue to build that. So this is a moment I could talk about the principles. I will hopefully tomorrow if we have time. But pivoting agility is one of the most important principles of success in successful partnering. And it’s the time you either gonna resist the change, you’re gonna pivot your business, or candidly, you don’t want to hear this you’re become extinct. Or you’ll be marginalized in a small little piece. Maybe Maybe you’ll find a niche, but you won’t grow your business successfully unless you learn
Announcer 23:53 to pivot. 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 partner. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide t