Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Six Timer – Jay McBain Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®
We are thrilled to welcome special guest Jay McBain, industry analyst, as he joins our host Vince Menzione for an enlightening discussion. Together, they navigate the ever-evolving landscape of the technology industry, covering diverse topics such as changing market dynamics, the transformative influence of generative AI, and the digital-first mindset adopted by millennial buyers. Join us as we uncover invaluable insights into business strategies, partnership dynamics, and marketplace trends. Whether you’re a CEO, industry professional, or tech enthusiast, this discussion promises to be intellectually stimulating and enlightening. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of why every CEO needs to be a Partnership Ecosystem Leader.
What You’ll Learn
1. Why CEOs should prioritize channel leadership with industry analyst Jay McBain. (0:00)
2. The changing nature of buying and decision-making in the digital age. (0:53)
3. Market trends and the role of partnerships in 2024. (5:52)
4. Platform companies and their success factors. (9:49)
5. Tech industry growth and marketplace fees. (13:31)
6. AI and its impact on the tech industry. (17:43)
7. Partner opportunities in the mid-market. (22:36)
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP
Watch on YouTube
Announcing Ultimate Partner Experience
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you.
Our journey began seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. It started with a podcast.
Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering.
As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come.
As an innovator, being part of this experience is more than joining a community; it’s about integrating into an ecosystem brimming with innovation and collaboration. Here, shared experiences and insights are your gateway to progress, offering connections with peers and resources to elevate your Cloud GTM strategy. This is your platform to engage, seek support, and contribute to our collective growth.
I’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP
Now on YouTube
Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos
partner, year, microsoft, marketplace, company, buyer, market, top, partnerships, customer, people, big, platform, leader, opportunity, point, ai, channel, world, organisations
Vince Menzione 0:00
I just finished an amazing episode with Jay McBain in our new South Florida studio. Jay is Principal Analyst at Canalis, a global technology analyst firm with a distinct channel focus. We had such an incredible discussion on why every CEO needs to be a channel leader. We’re here in South Florida at our new Boca Raton facility. When did you hit the big toe? It’s time to uplevel the game apart is the this is Ultimate. This is the ultimate partnering Ultimate Guide to partnering and ultimate ultimate partner. So live from Florida. Yep. And you are our very first guest in our new facility here. They’re nice courtesy of media zones, our partner and just excited to be here in person with you. Absolutely. Sort of that we talked about this Florida, this connection. We’re all the channel chiefs are coming to Florida. What do you think about that?
Jay McBain 0:53
Yeah, all the celebrities are coming here. And we’ve got a good group of channel chiefs. It’s the southern southern Florida mafia for for the channel.
Vince Menzione 1:00
I love it. I love it. Of course, with my Italian heritage, you had to say mafia. So Well, I’m excited to spend more time with you. You know, we it’s just two weeks ago that we were in person in Miami. We both had keynote presentations at the partner conference. And it was a really terrific event. And I really loved your session. So I was hoping today we could spend a little bit of time recounting some of that session. The five reasons why the next generation of CEOs will be partnership leaders warms my heart to know that as a partner, leader and former chief revenue officer as well. So I thought maybe we’d start here. I wanted to deep dive. But you had some very insightful comments, I thought maybe you can maybe summarise the five steps, and then we can deep dive into them.
Jay McBain 1:48
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So you know, for years now, we’ve been making these future predictions. You know, this is what’s going to happen to marketplaces. This is what’s happening to the new buyer. This is what’s happening to the economics of partnering and they were all a David Letterman top 10 list of you know, trends, yes, somewhat interconnected. But at some point coming to an inflection point. And 2024 happens to be the year of that inflection point, where number one, the new buyer is actually here. By the end of the year, a millennial will lead the majority of tech and telco purchasing over $5 trillion. And that’s both by number of millennials, as well as by budget. Number two, this platform economy, not just in the hyperscalers, not just in SAS companies, but taking hold and security. But outside of tech. You know, we always got confused that the biggest automotive companies and pharmaceuticals and banks wanted to become tech companies, every company was going to become a tech company, where we were confused as they actually want to become platform companies. And what that means yes, and that drives a whole different set of economics with the way partnering has worked for over 40 years down here in Boca Raton with August 12 1981. And that first IBM PC with the first IBM programme with Microsoft and others. But now we’re looking at a very different thing. And this is the year that it all changes. And then generative AI and other things that come into it. So again, inflection point all into one time.
Vince Menzione 3:14
Yeah, I thought we would deep dive on these it was really great and insightful conversation. Let’s talk about the millennials first, right? Because we’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts. And this new generation of buyers, right, the different buying persona used to clicking three times on my my phone and a box shows up right and, and maybe they don’t want to speak to as many salespeople they want to make their own decision. They go through their own process. You’ve talked about this, and how the decision making process has changed. Can you spend a minute there on that specifically? Yeah,
Jay McBain 3:47
so in a different psychology, different behaviours, different journey that they’re on. But suffice it to say they’re either Digital First, or digital only. Right. And when you said, you know, maybe I don’t want to talk to a human, the latest research says it’s 75% of them would actually like to get to end of job and this is to buy a million dollars worth of software. This is to buy a car, I’d like to get to end of job at a very important big decision. Digital only. Yeah, and so that’s 75%. So this is a different way to treat those first 28 moments before they make that decision. So that’s one thing. Second is their subscription and consumption friendly. You know, growing up on Netflix growing up on Spotify, yes, they’re okay to pay $1 a month for the rest of their life for a toothbrush that just gets replenished and they understand that they’re in it for life. And this goes again across technology, but it goes into every industry. Absolutely. And the way they bank the way they buy insurance the way they you know buy manufactured goods or you know pharmaceuticals it’s okay to buy be in these subscription or consumption models. And that leads to marketplace. Yes, there okay buy in seven layers to solve a problem. No one wants to buy this all you can eat you know best in class. To end to end platform, I’m okay building layers to my outcome. And I’m okay, building it as a team sport. So in the older generations, you and I generation, you know, we kind of looked for a single throat to choke somebody that was our trusted adviser, somebody that could really orchestrate it for us, right? The new generation, it’s okay to build a team. And it’s not going to be a team of the seven, seven, same seven people. It’s going to be a team of different types of people that have expertise in my industry that have expertise in my geography, expertise in the sector segment that I’m in the compliance and governance that I’m under all of the different angles, I want to build a team and I go back to sports, I don’t need seven quarterbacks that are 11 quarterbacks on the field. I need, you know, 11 different players, but I need them to each do their job of No, Bella Chuck. Well, you know, we
Vince Menzione 5:52
talked about partner to partner for years now Microsoft parlance was around partner party, we’ve been talking about the decade of the ecosystem. I don’t know who coined that phrase, maybe someone we know, personally. But this is this is really about ecosystem. This is really, when I think about the, I call it the marketplace moment, in fact, we’re taking we’re digitally buying, right? There’s a lot of things that come with along with that, right the ability to consume against these large cloud commitments, but also the opportunities you say, to stitch together the solution that best supports your requirements. And this is where we get into multi party offers, in fact, where you can, in fact, layer several solutions together, bring it serve it up to a customer already, he’s made $100 million commitment to a Microsoft, Amazon or Google and say this is exactly what we need. Right. So it’s exactly what you’re talking
Jay McBain 6:41
about. Yeah. And that’s the final piece of research on this new buyer is integration. First integration. First of all the things you’d write into an RFP, that’s important to you, you know, the price is important your service, your support, things like your brand reputation, you know, all these things would have criteria around how I’m going to make my decision. Number one criteria now is how you work in my environment. This is both as a personal story as well as a professional one, where Apple got on stage last year and said 79% of people won’t buy a car. Unless it is Apple CarPlay. Yeah, they neglected to mention Android Auto. But the fact of the matter is, you know, here’s an industry that’s $4 trillion in size, you may be, you know, taking over a dealership from your great grandparents. And all of a sudden, you’re going to lose four fifths of your buyers, because there’s not a technology integration in place. It’s amazing. And so watching this, and then, you know, feeding that into all the other parts of life, I’ll buy a product that’s 80% as good as the competitor, if it works better in my environment. So how do we feed in integration first buyer, a digital first or only buy or a subscription consumption marketplace friendly buyer. This is a complete reconstruction of how we do marketing, how we do selling, and how we do long term customer success.
Vince Menzione 7:54
It’s fantastic. So the next thing you talked about was the death of the cookie, you brought this up before as a big factor, right? And really why partnering is so important right now. And again, with my experience in partnering and as a CRO for formally, what would you say about the old acquisition models and new models?
Jay McBain 8:14
Yeah, so we talk about 2024 as an inflection point. And this end of the cookie, if you happen to be in marketing has been coming for years. It’s actually three years ago that on the iPhone, you could say I don’t want to be followed, I no longer want to be the product on the internet. And back then, you know, Facebook was publicly saying this could put us out of business. We rely on this, you think of Google whose half their company relies on this business model of selling our personal data in those first 28 moments. And obviously, there’s active buyers. So this is the third party data system. Were a couple of weeks ago to start off 2024 Google updates Chrome and Android to actually stop limiting cookies. They also made a declaration by the end of 2024. The cookie will be dead. Yeah. So in a world that moves from third party data, you remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And remember, you know, the billions of dollars which is created trillion dollar valuations for these companies and third party data selling our private data is now moving to second party, the channel partners ecosystem alliances are who owned these first 28 moments, the ebooks, the podcasts like this one, all the things that happen in these 28 moments, now becomes a second party data problem. And CMOS need to shift from third party to second party. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear and on finding this buyer intent. And this is just a remarkable thing happening along with everything else.
Vince Menzione 9:47
But it’s what we’ve been saying for so many years now. Right. I mean, many years ago, I went through a course by Miller Heiman strategic selling, and the whole idea was to find out as much situational analysis or awareness of your client. And the best way to do that is other people that are talking to your client who wants talks to your client than you, the seven or eight seats at the table, they might be competitors, they might be potential partners, they might just be friendlies. And be able to have those conversations. And now what you’re saying around this is, that’s why it’s so important that we have this new data intelligence. And we find new ways to approach the customer because we don’t have cookies.
Jay McBain 10:23
And so you know, a story around Microsoft, for example, you know, they did a better job of surrounding the buyer. Yes, they didn’t have a better price than than AWS, they didn’t have better product. They didn’t have better Superbowl ads. What they did is had better coverage of the seven people that surrounded every buyer. They had more Microsoft endorsements sitting at the table. And that sat in the ebooks, at the events, it sat in the podcast, it sat in all the different moments that the customer was friendlier to that solution versus that one. And that’s one example. But that’s the future of selling is a surround strategy of these seven trusted people, and how you get them to influence that buyer. In those first 28 moments.
Vince Menzione 11:11
It feels like the rest of the world is going to start speaking our language. This
Jay McBain 11:15
was part of the why the next CEO should you know have partnerships in their resume or be a partnership leader. Yeah.
Vince Menzione 11:23
So you this this year of the platform, but I wanted to dive in here a little bit, right, because this is this is somewhat new, you know, he talked about every company wanting to be a tech company. And now this year, the platform is a little bit of a different twist on this. Spend a little time with us on this one. Yeah,
Jay McBain 11:40
so it started the year with we did a paper with HubSpot, one of these leading platforms, along with partnership leaders and others that put together a study of the top 50 platforms in the world. Let’s look at companies like Salesforce. Let’s look at companies like ServiceNow and workday and Marketo and NetSuite, HubSpot, but the top 50 platforms in the world and ask questions, you know, how did they? Did they do this at scale? How do they create these integrations at the scale? How do they surround the buyer? How do they deploy the resources, the people, the the processes, the programmes, the underlying technology? How does this all work? And what makes these companies obviously the the highest valued companies in the world, right? They make up the highest valuations. And if you start at the fortune 500, at the top moving downwards, they’re the most valuable companies in the world. So this is where I said every company is looking in to become a platform company. Yes. And the the riches that come with that. You’ve got to learn though the basic underpinnings the foundation of what it means to be a platform, and how you run a platform. It just doesn’t come by accident. No, you have to put things in place. And it takes many, many years to make sure that you can build it’s like a universe. It’s like a sun that has planets and gravity and everybody getting pulled in. Because you’re not going to go out and sign up everybody to be part of your platform. Your platform has to be its own flywheel that kicks out a lot of multiplier of opportunity, and want people to come in. And we’re breaking down now, which is a little bit of the magic, the decoder ring, of what makes that happen. What kind of people do we need? What kind of programmes do we need? What kind of technology should we be running? How do we go to market? Again, another reason why maybe the CEO should be a partnership leader, if you’re looking to be a platform in any industry. Yeah. And
Vince Menzione 13:32
this ties into the whole marketplace conversation in such a great way as well. I mean, we’ve discussed the 45 billion that you had predicted by the end of 2026. I think it was originally 2025 2520 25. And now you said that that’s under call, then, potentially this year, what are we saying?
Jay McBain 13:51
So I mean, at Wall Street, now we’ve got not only the Big Three hyperscalers. But we’ve got now with the bigger marketplace, SAS companies and others, starting to show what their future commits are. And it’s one of these again, to get these high valuations. You know, investors love to know how much money you’ve got committed to you. And just the top three have over $340 billion committed rounding. And then somebody at some point has to figure out how to put that into product skews and put that together into seven layer stacks. But that 45 billion which was a hockey stick, it’s an 86% compounded annual growth. We think it might be doubling every single year, and we don’t see it stopping after 2025. This is just a trend that continues feeding this new buyer.
Vince Menzione 14:35
In fact, the number went from 300 billion to 340 billion in one quarter correct. So we’ll see what the what it’s expanding.
Jay McBain 14:41
We’ve also got in the last 30 or 60 days, we’ve got four press releases now. I’ll use AWS Marketplace as an example. CrowdStrike snowflake Palo Alto and Splunk have all issued press releases that they’re running a billion dollar business on one marketplace. And one of the predictions we made Alongside the 45 billion, which we also under called, is that AWS, as a leading marketplace, would join the likes of TD cynics and Ingram as a top 10 distributor by 2025. Again, under called it, they’re already there, they’re there. Now you have to get to about 5 billion to overtake dnh. An exclusive networks. And they’re already there. Yeah. So this is an area where they may have achieved, you know, $5 billion as one marketplace. But their sites are on the 60 billion at TD cynics and 50 billion at Ingram. The numbers are astounding. And when you’re doubling every single year, it doesn’t take you long to get there.
Vince Menzione 15:38
So what does this do to the channel and to distribution?
Jay McBain 15:41
Well, the blow up with this is the channel from decades ago, was at the point of sale, all the economics worked at the point of sale. And partners were only measured at that point of sale. Yeah, how much do you sell? Well, the fact of the matter is money is changing hands in a very different way. And one thing that happened and Microsoft led this, and everybody soon followed is Microsoft declared that a marketplace fee shouldn’t be 20%, or shouldn’t be 35%, which has apple in court with epic and 45% of what they’re trying to chose the New York Times. But Microsoft, like we’re not going to make money off our ecosystem. It costs us about 3% of the fee to run a marketplace. So much like a MasterCard or Visa swipe and consumer, it’s about 3% of the deal. Architect The movement of money, which is complicated, it’s, you know, we’ve got to move the money, we’ve got to take on the risk that the customer doesn’t pay, we’ve got to wait for the time value of money, net, 30, net, 60. Net 90. And in the end of all that we have to hire Biff to break knees when that customer doesn’t pay. But for forever, we thought in the 1980s, that that was worth 40% margin, then it was 30, then it was 20. And, you know, we’re all kind of deciding what that’s worth. But it’s now been declared and Google followed Microsoft, and just a few months ago, AWS is finally on board. Yes, but everybody’s at the point now and all the end users know that the whole value add of taking my money on behalf of a vendor is worth three. So let’s talk about where the other 17% of the gross two nets are. And a partner would tell you Well, I guess I do free consulting, I do free design and architecture. I do free implementations. And it’s great. I’ve always always got paid at one point. And a lot of the other stuff that maybe other partners like a system integrator would charge for, I’ve ended up giving for free. And and now in marketplace model, I could still go get the other 17% on a private offer or some sort of multi partner offer. And I might be willing to give up the 3% because that’s a part of the business. I’m not all that interested in.
Vince Menzione 17:43
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it’s changing the entire value chain equation is what I would say there. If you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I built growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers builders ISV sellers, s eyes MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is it’s noisy. I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard. We’re getting ready to open the doors early to pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder and innovator or a leader, visit our website. So we can’t have a talk in 2024 or even 2023 For that matter without bringing up AI generative AI. I did an interview with Microsoft’s leading reseller and Google’s leading reseller that earlier this week and we had this discussion about what’s happened this past year. I mean, Satya Nadella recognise the CEO of the Year gave us all a masterclass this past year, right about partnerships. In fact, he had been working on the Gen AI partnership for five years or so. And it came to fruition and everyone was caught on their back heels. I mean, Google was caught in the backfield. So they responded accordingly. But it’s changing the game now, right? It’s changing the valuation of those organisations quite a bit from 2023 to this year. What would you say about Gen AI? Yeah,
Jay McBain 19:50
and I think you know, Microsoft’s a good story where, you know, he will be crowned you know, with a Jack Welch award as the leader of the decade if not leader the century so far because, you know, overachieving Apple a couple of weeks ago in valuation, yeah, was a big testament to all the moves that have been made, not just the channel and partner moves, but the moves into generative AI. But there’s also he’s also confused the market, he’s come out and said it’s a $4 trillion opportunity. And in a world economy, that’s 105 trillion in GDP. That’s material. And so partners, you know, kind of look at that and go, I think I believe him. But Can somebody break it down? For me what that really means to me? Where in the cycle is this? What can I charge for? What’s my opportunity? How fastest growing? What kind of skills and competencies do I need to build? Now listen, I run a small business over here. And can somebody break down that 4 trillion for me, and, you know, at an analyst firm it Canalis. I mean, that’s what we’ve been doing. You know, here’s the $15 billion connected to that bigger number that happened last year, here’s the 150 8 billion, that’s going to happen within the next four years, a 59% growth rate. But very specifically, here’s the type of business model, here’s the kind of skills, here’s the kind of products you need to sell services you need to sell, to go take advantage of this. And it’s somewhat time delayed, you know, if you’re a VAR MSP, you know, there’s not a laundry list of things that you’re going to go and double or triple your business in 2024 around, unless you’re doing deep consulting on language models, and tuning and training, and, you know, connecting the dots between the 85% of the world’s business data in these large language models sitting out at open AI and sitting with Google. Unless you’re in these deep business conversations with the board and C suite at the biggest of companies. There’s not a lot to do this year. And, you know, our recommendation is perhaps go back and look at the cybersecurity industry growing by double digits. Yeah, look at managed services growing by double digits, look at the things you can control today. And perhaps don’t get too excited about changing everything shutting down your current business, and going all in.
Vince Menzione 22:00
Yeah, no, I would add to that. I do think I don’t know where the $4 trillion number comes from how you break out, it sounds like we’re obviously not there now. But I do think that there is an immediate opportunity, Microsoft put some layered in some significant investments in incentives on their co pilot products. And I do think for some of the MSPs. What I’m hearing now is that every CEO, wants is having a conversation about Gen AI, right? How do I how do I take advantage? How do I execute against it? In fact, I heard a quote this week from somebody from Microsoft, that the CEO is now the new CIO. I love that quote, I’m going to reuse that. But I think I think they’re making transform transformation decisions that were normally made further down in the organisation, what would you say? Yeah,
Jay McBain 22:45
so we went and asked, you know, Microsoft’s current 400,000 partners, what they think, and a third of them are very sceptical. And they’re happy to take a laggard or late majority play. The next third, are on the fence. And they’re not going to play early majority, or even early adopter. And then 1/3, and this was a comparison to when we asked them 2018 about AI, one thirds, a little bit more excited on the front end. So a highly sceptical, balanced audience, because guess what, they’ve lived through emerging tech hype cycles before, yes, 10 years ago, when IoT was going to take over the world. Last year when Metaverse is going to change everything. So you know, whether it’s quantum computing or Northern robotics, or self driving cars, or 3d printers, I mean, this is a sceptical audience to say that, you know, we’ll take a little bit of a wait and see. And certain partner types that are connected to certain customer segments are going to see a huge opportunity up front. And, you know, it’s wise that, you know, somebody breaks down that number. And make sure that over the course of five years, you know, ahead of time when to start to engage and, and get into these conversations, that technology lifecycle adoption curve, right. And I know the $4 trillion. I mean, when you break it against the world’s economy and 27 industries across 193 countries, and you start to, you know, augment resources and replace resources. And when you rethink your marketing and sales and customer success, your invoicing, your billing your finance, and operations and HR, every part of your company changes that adds up to 4 trillion pretty fast. Yes, it does. The fact of the matter, though, is that’s world economy talk. What services can I sell next Tuesday? And how do I skew them up? And what kind of people do I need to train to go and delight the customer? Is the conversations we should be having in partnerships. Again, another reason why, you know, senior in your company, you should have, you know, people that can understand how this is all going to work.
Vince Menzione 24:51
So you and I have talked about the mid market quite a bit, and I spent quite a bit of time analysing this market. I did an event where we feel Richard, some of the leaders from Microsoft and talked about the big market opportunity. In fact, one of those leaders is doubling down on partner attach because it’s I think it’s an under penetrated, I believe you will agree with me here under penetrated market, I wanted to get your viewpoint on this as well. Because I do think it’s a huge opportunity for partners in general, that are both kind of clustered to the top to the enterprise. I’ll call it 11,000 enterprise organisations.
Jay McBain 25:26
Yeah, so I happen to run mid market for years and years at IBM and Lenovo. So I know, it’s kind of the mushy middle, companies can quite easily have a top down strategy, the top 11,000, you know how to put out your resources, how to, you know, cover, have the capacity have the capabilities to cover that market. And then you know, the SMB is a little bit less known. It’s a bottoms up, it’s a community led, grassroots led, you’ve got to influence the influencers, which is a big part of the channel, this is where your channel strategies really form in SMB? Yeah, because you need an army to help you to surround those customers. And mid market is probably the least understood, because that’s where the two things meet. And there’s not a lot of expertise, there’s not a list of partners, you can just download that, you know, have mid market as their only target. There’s not a, you know, just an easy go to market routes to market that you can check the box, oh, I need to sign up these distributors, I need to sign up these partners, I need to go do this. And then we’re gonna go get our fair share mid market. So the leaders, you know, are under invested in their own companies. You know, there’s not an understanding either below or above them in their companies of what this is. So, you know, I’m glad that you’re taking this on, to figure out what this mushy middle is, and how to take action. I
Vince Menzione 26:44
think it’s a digital, I think it’s it’s marketplace driven. And it’s combining all of the partners, all the seats at the table to accomplish what we need to do. To your point, it is the mushy middle. And the organisations that the top aren’t paying attention. The ones at the bottom are paying attention the way they need to, right. So
Jay McBain 27:01
some need to scale up some need to scale downs, right. And it’s a massive market. Huge, it’s a huge market. And, you know, for for companies, there’s billions of dollars of opportunity, that doesn’t take that level of investment.
Vince Menzione 27:12
I mean, I’ll quote out of school here, Microsoft alone has somewhere between 75 plus billion dollars of business in that market. So that’s a pretty significant market for partners. So I’d love to having you here today. And next time, we’re going to have a longer session we’re going to have we’re going to host you here and maybe even have some partners in the room. But we’re on a tight timeline today. So for our viewers, listeners, what are they need to be thinking about and doing differently now that we’re in 2024 in a big way.
Jay McBain 27:43
I mean, the first thing in this is not a surprise to anyone is continued to be obsessed about your customer. get obsessed about the people they trust, get obsessed about what they read, where they go, who they follow, get obsessed about a journey that isn’t about the point of sale. It’s about the 28th moments before that, yeah, it’s at the point of sale, regardless of how money changes hands. So getting the customer to the dance, getting them on the dance floor. And now with every company, keeping them dancing all night long, every 30 days forever. You know, one company a couple of weeks ago became the most valuable company in the world. By telling Wall Street we’d be the most sticky, predictable, reliable, repeatable and scalable revenue. not reliant on a September launch of a product every year. Yes. And the market responded. And so, you know, we can talk about a $3 trillion company or we can talk about a startup. The same thing is, if you get obsessed about your customer, when you move outwards from your customer, you’re gonna find that there’s partnerships everywhere, in the integrations, in the go to market, in the routes to market in all the influence. All the things you need to do around your customer, are really partner driven at this point. And that’s why I think your leadership should have much better skills and partnerships.
Vince Menzione 29:00
I love what you have to say. Jay, I want to thank you. This is your sixth appearance. The robe is coming. It’s the Saturday Night Live Saturday. I live Rob is coming, except it’s gonna have the five timer and then we’re gonna have the stripes at time you come. Yeah, a lot of them both. I want to thank you for joining us today live from South Florida. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Guide to partnering.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feature amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partners