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For this 67th episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering™, I was joined by Sharan Hildebrand, the Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Hitachi Solutions North America, for an engaging discussion on her partner business, her leadership in women in technology and her career journey.
Sharan is a 25-year veteran in the technology industry, with a successful track record of leading global sales and growth initiatives for the past two decades. One of the things I like so much about Sharan is that she is a sales leader first.
I was excited to feature Sharan as she is one of the partners that “gets it right”, working with Microsoft’s tech giant. In addition to managing Hitachi’s Award-Winning relationship with Microsoft, she has built and nurtured an alliance ecosystem. She has built best practices around successful partner to partner or P2P sales motions.
Sharan s extremely passionate about empowering women in technology and fueling leadership opportunities for women in STEM roles both inside and outside of Hitachi.
In addition to serving in a Women’s Leadership Role within Hitachi, her other responsibilities include contributing to the Chicago Women in Technology (WIT) community (Chicago WIT Chapter President Emeritus), serving as the Central Region WIT Chair and board member of the US IAMCP community and US Membership Chair Emeritus. She is also the Vice President of the Women’s Executive Channel Advisory Board, founded by our mutual friend and podcast guest Lani Phillips.
As founder of MSHEmpowers, LLC. (www.mshempowers.com) Sharan focuses on helping women looking to re-enter the workforce, connect with positions in technology.
I so enjoyed this discussion and the broad range of topics, including:
- Hitachi Solutions’ Go to Market Strategy.
- Hitachi’s success as a Partner of the Year Award Winner
- Sharan’s best practices in building a partner ecosystem and coordinating P2P or Partner to Partner motions.
- How she vets partners based on a 19-category scoring model.
- Her professional journey and the work she does to empower and mentor women in technology.
As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ and where they can find us. I’d love your feedback. Please like the podcast and provide comments or reach out to me at @vincemenzione on Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also like and follow Ultimate Guide to Partnering Facebook page or drop me a line at vincem@cloudwavepartners.com.
LINKS & RESOURCES
- Find Sharan Hildebrand on LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Email – shildebrand@hitachisolutions.com
- MSHEmpowers, LLC
- Book she has gifted often – Getting Naked by Patrick Lencioni.
- The transcript of our interview is available below.
Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ is a rich compendium of what makes successful partnerships and is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play, Player FM, almost anywhere you get your podcasts!
Transcript – Please excuse typos in this transcript as it is provided through an automated service – otter.ai
Vince Menzione 0:36
Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to partnering for this 67th episode of the podcast. I was joined by Sharon Hildebrand the Vice President of strategic alliances for Hitachi solutions in North America. Sharon is a 25 year veteran in the technology industry with a successful track record of leading global sales and growth initiatives for the past two decades. And one of the things I like the most about Sharon is she is a sales leader. First. I got to know Sharon through the work I’ve done with the International Association of Microsoft channel partners and voices for innovation. And I was excited to feature Sharon as she is one of the partners that gets it right, working with one of the tech giants Microsoft. In addition to managing Hitachi his award winning relationship with Microsoft. She’s built and nurtured an alliance ecosystem of partners, and is a great example of what a partner to partner sales motion should look like. In addition, Sharon is extremely passionate about empowering women in technology and fueling leadership opportunities for women in STEM roles, both inside and outside of Itachi. And she is also the vice president of the women’s executive channel advisory board, founded by our mutual friend and podcast guests, Lonnie Phillips. I so enjoyed our discussion and we covered a broad range of topics. In this episode, you’ll learn more about Hitachi go to market strategy, Sharon and the team success as a Partner of the Year winner. Best Practices in building and coordinating partner department motions, how she vets partners based on a 19 categories scoring model, and her professional journey and the work she does to empower and mentor women in technology. As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please tell your friends about the podcast and where they can find us. And I’d love your feedback. Please like the podcast and provide comments or reach out to me at Vince Menzione on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You can also like and follow Ultimate Guide to partnering on our Facebook page, or drop me a line at Vince Menzione at Cloud way partners calm. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Sharon, welcome to the podcast.
Sharan Hildebrand 2:59
Thank you For the opportunity to join you,
Vince Menzione 3:01
I’m really excited to have you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to Partnering. You’re the Vice President of strategic alliances at Hitachi solutions North America. You’re a top Microsoft partner working with other Microsoft partners to drive greater value and our paths of cross through iamcp and voices for innovation. I’m excited to have you here today to share with our listeners, Hitachi is unique value. Best Practices you’ve built to drive partner to partner plays, how you go to market, what you look for in successful partnerships, your career journey and your personal story. And that’s quite a bit to unpack. So welcome.
Sharan Hildebrand 3:37
Thank you, Vince. I really appreciate the opportunity and coming from a partner lens. I’m a big fan of what you’re doing here as regardless of what you do, ultimate partnering with others is one of the keys to success.
Vince Menzione 3:53
I’m just so passionate about partnerships, as you know, and I love the work that you and Hitachi are doing and I want Explore that with our listeners today. So again, really excited for this conversation. First of all, congratulations on your Microsoft 2020 Partner of the Year awards, you won Microsoft global intelligence sales and marketing Partner of the Year, and were named a finalist for connected field service Partner of the Year, and proactive customer service Partner of the Year. So really great success.
Sharan Hildebrand 4:23
Thank you. We are extremely proud of this, as we now are celebrating over 40 awards that we have achieved over the past few years. Our team works hard. And when this hard work is recognized during Microsoft’s award season, it’s extremely validating for our company.
Vince Menzione 4:40
Well, 40 Awards, I mean, that’s outstanding. So you know, it obviously shows and I hear about Hitachi from several people that I talked to in the business. So I know your name is resonating. And you’re seeing as a partner that gets it right. But really want to focus in on that conversation here today. So first of all, Hitachi is a very large company and a very well known brand. Can you share a bit more about your group within Hitachi? What is the group or divisions value proposition and go to market?
Sharan Hildebrand 5:09
Absolutely. So Hitachi solutions is actually part of Tokyo based Hitachi Ltd, which is the seventh largest technology company in the global 500 and the hundred and second largest Overall, we have over 800 sister companies, amongst us about 21% of those 800 plus our technology based companies that have dodgy solutions unique value prop actually stems from the fact that we are one of the few multi cloud partners that are 100% dedicated to the Microsoft platform. Things like simplifying, streamlining, maximizing a customer’s investment in the Microsoft platform, kind of sounds buzzword II but when you think about how we help customers take their CRM and for example related service data, and then combine them With telemetry data from sensors that they might have on vehicles in the field, and then pull that data into a model where machine learning can offer up predictive analytics. And by the way, we can also complement this with power apps that, for example, could handle maintenance requests. doing all this in a one stop shop fashion makes it easy for our customers to manage in lieu of cobbling together competing platforms, I think that’s at the end of the day, a pretty strong value prop.
Vince Menzione 6:30
I love that. And you know, we had Rodney Clark here on a recent episode, I should the last episode, and we talked about IoT. And this is another example of how information coming from machines and then being applied to the cloud and machine learning allows for just amazing results and things to happen that we never saw before and in our industry in our world.
Sharan Hildebrand 6:50
And definitely more to come. Yeah,
Vince Menzione 6:52
exciting times. Now you lead the Alliance’s organization at Itachi. And I know you have a very, very strong focus on Microsoft Can you tell us a little bit more about that group and the pillars of your organization?
Sharan Hildebrand 7:05
Absolutely, actually is you and I discussed I think in an initial or previous conversations, when this role was offered to me, VP of alliances for North America actually turned it down. I have a background of 25 years plus in sales and sales management. But when I sat down and actually thought about the difference that I could make in this role based on my sales experience, and how I could take the blinders off of a typical Alliance, you know, managers activity, what we then did is create an ecosystem that’s organized by four pillars. So Microsoft is our largest partner and they are a pillar in and of themselves. Then the second pillar is our ISV community. These are critical relationships to us that provide value add solutions, then we have our non ISVs. Consider these training partners, and then one that’s really near and dear to my heart. fourth pillar is CSR or corporate social responsibility, and community. And this is a pillar where we’re looking to connect with organizations where we can do when I’m making air quotes, do good, well, doing well, and give back as we extend our reach through socially responsible groups, and then also user groups as well.
Vince Menzione 8:20
I love that. I love to hear more about that as well. You know, you talk about the Microsoft Alliance, the ISVs, the training partners and the like. You layer that on top of a set of industries, I believe. So where is the key focused industries that you work at in tachi?
Sharan Hildebrand 8:36
Sure, though, it is. We’ll call it the big four big four and a half now that Microsoft has done a great job of bringing CPG and retail to the forefront. So our primary industries are financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, and then retail, and hands down with regards to differentiators in this industry is our multi cloud cross platform story. So Regardless of the industry, that you’re working in being able to educate customers on the power of the Microsoft platform, not just dynamics or Azure synapse, for example, definitely, in my opinion narrows our competitive landscape. But with regards to Industry Focus, and working with Microsoft industry leaders, were grateful to have the connections and support of leadership in each industry group going into fy 21. This is a very busy time of year as we participate in all the kickoff meetings that Microsoft is having. And we’ve had a series of strategic conversations where we’re able to run to the real meat of what we do by showing examples telling stories of customer wins. And that’s where the expertise of our vice presidents we invested in a team of vice presidents dedicated to each of the key industries you’ve talked about really differentiates us Microsoft’s additional focus with elevating manufacturing and CPG. And retail this year is something we’re extremely excited about. Because we’ve been investing in those industries, you know, for the past decade plus,
Vince Menzione 10:10
yeah, you bring out a couple of really important points here. First of all, I want to commend you for being an alliance business leader now, because a lot of us who came from sales don’t go into partner and I find that people that come from a sales background, get it right, they know how to drive but partner strategy, even more so than people that have been in Alliance roles all their career. And then the other thing, right? That’s right. It’s all about selling. And it’s not about Kumbaya meetings, as I like to refer to them as right. It’s about executing on the results. And then you talk about, like some of the differentiation there. I want to tease that out a little bit more, because one of the things I say in my coaching that I do for organizations is like, you need to be known for that one thing that differentiates you like, how does Microsoft know you as an organization? I think you said some of that here, you bring a level of industry expertise, and you layer in investments in that industry. To drive results, which helps Microsoft be more successful with those customers in those verticals.
Sharan Hildebrand 11:05
Absolutely. And to kind of expand on that a little bit more of when you think about our customers and why they choose Hitachi, I like to say that some of our very best customers are ones where we have delivered that cross cloud solution. But it’s true as there have been deals where for example, a customer was preparing to sign a Salesforce contract. And at the 11th hour, both the Microsoft field team and our tachi dynamics, team members, we brought resources to the table from our Azure practice. And by telling the story of a platform that can address their enterprise reporting needs, their data warehouse needs, their future analytics and potential data science needs. We want we want and we were able to grab the deal again at the 11th hour cloud.
Vince Menzione 11:55
Yeah, so you’re you’re bringing in your own IP into the into the equation as well as ditching or Building a fabric with other partners, we have
Sharan Hildebrand 12:02
a number of our delivery leads that are members of various PACs both on the data and AI side, the application development side, which helps keep us tethered very closely to what is going on in Redmond. So we can bring that to our customers.
Vince Menzione 12:17
Yeah. And I find that having those connection points are just so valuable because you find out about things that are happening before others do. And you’re able to make those micro investments and be agile as a partner with Microsoft.
Sharan Hildebrand 12:30
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It helps differentiate us.
Vince Menzione 12:33
So we’re living in a time like no other. We’ve had so many ways we can describe what’s happened in the last six months with COVID. But you know, we’ve all seen this increase in rapid transformation. And Satya has been quoted I you know, I’ve had both Lonnie and Rod romney talk about this. You know, now it’s five years of transformation and five months sooner, it’ll be six years of transformation in six months. What are you seeing now that you hadn’t expected to see or you’re seeing different
Sharan Hildebrand 13:00
Yeah, so this is a big topic probably in a podcast in and of itself and I just say Alani, one of my favorites. So, first of all, my business standpoint definitely has been challenging, most definitely for us. We have customers that have either postponed or cancelled their projects to elaborate revenue. And it’s heartbreaking to hear about furloughs, for example, that are near impossible to plan for. But we do have strong leadership’s within Hitachi solutions that are taking a conservative approach to managing our own numbers going forward. And thankfully, from an employee standpoint, we haven’t been dramatically affected internally. But we do continue to extend our best foot forward and supporting our customers understanding their plight, as they try to manage through this difficult time with regards to digital transformation. And some of the previous conversations you just referenced. I believe that transformation has been accelerated by need not designed And this is my humble opinion. And I don’t know if this is a bad thing or not, I’m not sure to be honest. But you know, companies that have never considered having to support a remote workforce are now scrambling to figure out how to do this. As you know, this has to be respected has to be hard and stressful for them right now, that the requirement that they’re facing, embracing a cloud based solution, I believe in the long run will better position them once the dust settles around us a bit more. We’re all familiar with the term growing pains. And you know, having to hit the gas on your five year cloud plan with a mobile your five year cloud and mobile transformation plan. And then condense that into a couple months is something that companies just did not plan for weren’t prepared for and don’t have the resources to support. So my hope is that there are varying degrees of rapid transformation, knowing that this is taking place that will allow more companies to stay in business.
Vince Menzione 14:59
Yeah. I think you mentioned is very insightful, right? This whole need to pivot quickly like it was on the horizon. It was on the roadmap, but we didn’t need to do it right now. Well, now you need to do it because we’re all working remotely. We need touch lists retail, we need to be able to do online shopping. We need to do things we never did before. And the telehealth telehealth was an area where there was only maybe a 5% uptick. And now everyone in Berlin many people are using telehealth because they can’t go see their doctor, right. So we’re seeing all these things that we didn’t expect to see as quickly, right? Absolutely. So I am fascinated by the work that you do. You’re very strong. And Microsoft uses a term P to P which is partner to partner engagement where multiple partners work together. Ronnie and I talked about this on our last episode about how this is happening more today. But you do work up front to build your own partner to partner ecosystem. And I’m fascinated by that work and I was hoping you could share more about what you do and peel back on that. But
Sharan Hildebrand 16:00
really, you’re getting to the heartbeat of what I love about being in this role so far. So when I started in this role last year I inherited just under, I’m calling I just under 40. What I’m calling identified partners, ISV partners, and majority of these partners were dynamics focused coming from the Azure world. I was part of the cabinet’s global acquisition by Hitachi solutions back in 2019. The first thing I had to do was get my arms around what these partners actually deliver, who does tax versus contract management versus HR. So I took a look at the portfolio and went through a vetting process with Hitachi sales and leadership teams, and was able to rate our partners one to seven, how to scale and basically if you came out at a one, two or three, you were identified as a top partner, and some of the criteria around this included level of engagement, support go to market programs. You were Either had or were preparing to, to work with us on a call it a mail sorting exercise of sorts, but it helped me identify where we should invest our time and resources going forward. Because it’s really hard to do that with 40 plus partners. So now I’m focused on making sure the portfolio reflects our cross cloud offerings as well, which means I’m currently prioritizing more agile partners, like prophecy data, bricks and GitHub.
Vince Menzione 17:26
So is there a triage exercise that you’ve gone through with 40 partners to get it right?
triage is an interesting word when I was very surgical, right,
so
Sharan Hildebrand 17:36
I like to think that I was perhaps that thoughtful, but really the the catalyst was not trying to boil the ocean first. And when I took a look at how I managed my customers, my countless and even my Microsoft relationships back in my sales days, I was how wide of a net Could I cast and how many people could I connect with because sales is all about volume and creating that pipeline and that making that top of the funnel as big as possible, well, managing Alliance partnerships is a little different. And so there was a curve there. So again, in the spirit of not boiling the ocean, I knew I wouldn’t be able to be effective and get close to 40 separate partners. So I developed the Hitachi p2p or partner partner program that includes just our partners at this point. I started by identifying 10 and this may grow to 15. I don’t have that fixed, separate ISVs to truly double down on from an investment standpoint. So we have a formal program that involves Cosell motions, co marketing motions that we work with each partner very closely on. We are sharing MDF funds, we are conducting ourselves at a field level, doing Cosell days and joint account planning. And again, this is across the board not just sales people but our marketing teams that we’re keeping connected to going forward.
Vince Menzione 18:55
So it’s hard enough just partnering with Microsoft, right? I mean, I talk to people about you Know what it takes to get it right working just with Microsoft? How do you coordinate partnering across three organizations? And, you know, you talked about the branding the go to market, and then selling the CO selling days, but you’re doing it against three organizations, not just you and Microsoft. So how do you get that right?
Sharan Hildebrand 19:16
There’s a very simple formula that we put together as part of the partner to partner kickoff. And we started with the two main motions that you and I’ve already discussed, the CO selling and the CO marketing. But there is a slide that I walk, the partners, the ISV partners that we want to invite into our top partner program through and it starts with Hitachi defining who we want to sell to what we’re going to sell how we’re going to sell it, and then pulling in immediately collaborating with our ISV partners. So getting back to not boiling the ocean, we’re not doing this without 40. But let’s say we’re looking at a an enable always on play that we want to focus On. So we know what the Microsoft platform with the technologies are there we know also with our own IP Cosell, but we can pull into the conversation to complement that. That’s a very important part of the Hitachi p2p program is the top partners have to have approved or certified IP Cosell solutions. Because as we both know, that’s a great, that’s a lot for our Microsoft friends. We want to help them retire more quota. I’ll go back to the field service campaign. So enable always on service, we know that we have a CRM component, we know that we have a field service and our own IP Cosell. So then we take a look at who our ISV partners that have solution offerings that makes sense to complement this campaign. And we’ll reach out to them. Not every ISV partner in the program necessarily lines up with the field surface play, and that’s okay, we will go ahead and we’ll collaborate with them on plays where the messaging does make sense. So we have that same conversation with the ISV teams. their marketing folks, their sales leadership, their alliance managers. And we get Chris on exactly what it is what we’re going to sell who we’re going to sell to and what the timeline and targets are. So we have our first version of what we’ll call a Cosell day, and then arms locked. Then we go to Microsoft. And wait no, right? We have done the due diligence, the homework, here’s our very prescriptive plan. Here’s a specific play that we want to empower you to talk to this fixed set of accounts about and we have found, you know, I’m all about focus, and we have found that less is definitely more when it comes to sitting across the table from someone and talking about account planning. If you know they say that, if a guy walks into a tie shop and you present them with 100 ties, he’ll walk out with none. If you present with three, probably buy two or three.
Vince Menzione 21:56
I think I’m that guy with the ties by the way.
Sharan Hildebrand 22:00
I don’t know, via our video chat, I haven’t seen you as a Thai guy yet, but I can, I can definitely see that
Vince Menzione 22:05
I haven’t been wearing the most COVID t shirts mostly these days.
Sharan Hildebrand 22:10
So it’s that same philosophy with turning to and wanting to leverage the power of our Microsoft team in the field, which, you know, they bring a huge sea of, you know, sellers, you know, to the table and channel managers and partner people. So, being tight and focused again about that play, who we want to present it to and how we want to present it is how I’m working on navigating three different groups of folks.
Vince Menzione 22:38
So you get crisp with the partner and their teams, you you come together and form a joint value proposition I guess is the best way I would describe that or joint vision for what the partnership is going to bring. And then you take it to the Microsoft Teams because you’re also working across various Microsoft components like your managed from one group, the ISVs managed from another group, there’s marketing resources or GTM or horses in different groups. So you’re having to bring all those components together and make it work.
Sharan Hildebrand 23:05
Absolutely. I listen to you actually, it sounds complex. And maybe we have found a, the perfect solution or the magic does to, to work through that. But I have a mantra, and one of my mantras is activity breeds answers. mulling breeds indecision. So it’s one thing that I have found, you know, and you’ve heard often fail fast. Let’s just run to this. And I’ve actually had some pep talk type conversations with a couple of my partners. Let’s not over engineer the upfront planning. Let’s just try this. I understand it’s a little different or unique than what you’ve done before, and doesn’t follow the traditional playbook. Let’s mix things up a little bit and see what happens. At least we’ll know what doesn’t work, what works and we’ll learn from you know, from that, which doesn’t work as well. So I try not to, for me to say I wouldn’t have a Cosell day or wouldn’t have motions with strategic partners like avalara or prophecy or get hub in flight right now, I think, Vince if I would have sat down and had to write the perfect playbook for how to do this. So one of the criteria that is that’s come to the forefront with evaluating who are key PTP partners. What kind of flexibility you know, do you have in this and what’s the energy around being creative and thinking out of the box. One of my favorite stories right now from a co marketing standpoint is with avalara, where their sales channel is different than ours. They don’t have boots on the ground that are walking around and knocking on doors. They leverage their channel very heavily. So quite often, when you have someone in this case, we have someone that’s dedicated to working with Hitachi, when a deal comes to him to help support there’s already a partner associated with it. So I was, you know, lightly joking around with an Valera team and they’re held in high regard at Hitachi solutions. I said, you know, part of the partner program is that if I could make a bumper sticker and put it on, on folks cars, I would write order taking, and then draw a circle around it and align through it. Because in my opinion, that’s not true partnership, there needs to be and I’m not talking about quid pro quo or give get, but at the end of the day, there needs to be value for both groups of people. And when avalara explained or chant that explain their channel model, I went well, I mean, it is what it is, they’re not going to hire a bunch of people to line up with our field sellers to go knock on doors. So So what else can we do together, and they are very mature, sophisticated, and wonderfully creative marketing team. And they came to me with a proposal, a very robust proposal about how we could benefit from leveraging. They have a scoring model, they have a data model that they use to score accounts propensity to buy and sell You know, we’re going to start here. So the first step in the second step is we’re going to take these top customers, we identify and, and use our inside sales teams to call down and call on Hitachi and avillez behalf and we’re going to run this campaign. Oh, and by the way, we’re also going to write a check and help fill a kitty for a sales incentive prize for your sellers, not the avalere sellers. But for Hitachi sellers. For the first three salespeople who close a booking, they have their choice of beer of the Month Club one in the Month Club, I think there’s a Book of the Month Club, or they can donate that prize money to a charity of their choice, Vince, that just that’s the epitome of thinking outside the box of red and saying, well, we don’t have boots on the ground to do co selling with you. So okay, good luck. And that’s what we’re looking for. And I think that’s the spirit of true partnership. Now getting back to being flexible, wanting to experiment or being willing to experiment to try new things to go to market to
Vince Menzione 27:00
Well, in a Valera has a very strong partner pedigree and strong product portfolio. It’s great to see the work that they’ve done there. What a great example. Absolutely. So what about partners? And you talked about this list of 40 and getting it to 15. And we don’t have to talk about the other 25, necessarily, but you’ve been around this partner business for a long time. What about organizations that didn’t get it right, working with you? Is there something you’d wish you’d said to them to coach them? get them back on the path to success? What was it? Was it an attitude? Was that a business principle or focus? What would you tell them now if you could?
Sharan Hildebrand 27:33
Yeah, so that’s a really interesting conversation. And there is an example that does come top of mind. Another part of our ecosystem of the p2p program ecosystem is a set of value categories that we have, in hindsight, had I gone through and probably done the value category ranking, which includes things like do they support a global footprint for expansion or how easy is it for us to develop skills, new talent if we happen to be certified in their solution, what is their positive impact on sales? And I’m not just talking numbers, I’m talking to people engagement, a strong sense of business that business ethics, you know, is it? Do we have a healthy relationship with the executive levels? Is there an escalation path, so I’ve 19 different categories that we evaluate partners on it, in hindsight, the situation, they just didn’t put a lot of emphasis on customer service or customer follow up. And the risk, I think that you’re in that whole order taking when you’re in that mode, the risk as an SI, we’re in is when we pull in an ISV. We were essentially endorsing them and recommending them and when the ISP does not follow through, and you start getting emails that say I haven’t heard from this particular person in X amount of weeks, we actually have an issues what’s even more important that I hear from them now, when your concerns fall on deaf ears, it’s apparent But it’s a flag. But in hindsight, it’s so we did reach out, you know, to to this team. And we explained, here’s what we’re hearing, there were just lots of levels of defensiveness. The customers problem and you know, this person traditionally has been difficult. They’re still our customer at the end of the day. It made me realize the importance of layering on the value categories for partners before we pull them into our p2p program. Now, what we are we still doing business with this partner? Absolutely. Because they are embedded with a lot of our customers. But when we go to market with them, will we have a relationship with them like we do with extra logics avalara prophecy, easy territory, GitHub. I’m not sure about that. So the conversation would be based on this experience that we had, here are these value categories that are very important to us. Do, you line up with them, and if you don’t, that’s fine, too. We can still do business together but it’ll just be a different level of engagement.
Vince Menzione 30:00
I love that you’ve taken the time to develop that like 19 categories, and then you grade each of the partners against that. And it’s all about the customer at the end of the day too. Like I I’m always surprised when I hear a partner, any technology organization be defensive about helping a customer through a situation, right?
Sharan Hildebrand 30:17
Yeah. Especially now is a head scratcher.
Vince Menzione 30:20
What would you say? What advice would you give to partners that wish to work with you and your organization? Like, how should they reach? How do they reach out to you? Or do you reach out to them? What does that look like?
Sharan Hildebrand 30:29
So yes, here is my here’s my newspaper ad partners who want to engage with us. Raise your hand, don’t be shy. You don’t have to be the biggest guy on the block to work with Hitachi solutions. And that’s one common conversation I’ve had with a lot of small organizations, one of my favorite and newest partners. We have easy territory and they have 15 people in their organization. Now they are a spin off of a larger Microsoft partner but the enterprise And commitment to this PDP program, reciprocal selling, getting out rolling our sleeves up doing account planning with our field, taking a look at go to market funds, you know, and sharing that, you know, both of us writing a check to go in, launch a campaign, I was instantly in love with this. And so and they are going to be I know a very strong partner of ours going forward. First, don’t think too much about your size, shape, or if you have the willingness to have a reciprocal partnership, meaning that you have either field people or you have sales programs, and that we can share in the good getting the investment of the partnership, the energy to try new things I talked about, you know, failing fast, let’s not think too much about stuff. Let’s just run to an idea and see what happens. Obviously, we’re managing, you know, the risk in that. But let’s think outside of the box because that’s really how we’re going to differentiate ourselves. Those are the softer qualities and a minimum is preferred. If you have your IP Cosell approved, because we’re trying to magnify the power of the IP Cosell benefits to our Microsoft field. I think it really is. It’s that it’s that simple. I mean, there is a vetting process on our side, once we do, once a new partner is presented to me, we do have a pre sales team. We have our industry VPS that I’ve already talked about. And some of our management that you know, there’s a couple of conversations and there’s a cycle that you know, you will, you will go through, it doesn’t have to be a reseller relationship, either. Actually, we’re launching or starting our initial partnerships now with more with a referral relationship. So we can sort of date a little bit before we get married. That pattern seems to be it helps us go farther faster, because it’s a little more simple to track and maintain, as we continue to build more trust between organizations and deepen our relationship going forward.
Vince Menzione 32:54
That’s great. And we will share links to your contact information in our show notes. We’ll have your link In profile for sure, and any other way that you want partners to get in touch with you, but it’s when I hear heard loud and clear is, you know, you don’t have to be the largest partner, the biggest ISV. But if you’ve got a specific solution that solves for one of our clients or industries, in a big way, reach out to us,
Sharan Hildebrand 33:16
please, absolutely.
Vince Menzione 33:18
Awesome. So I’m going to shift gears a little bit here and Sharon, you know, from listening to other episodes and some of the conversations we’ve had, and I am fascinated by how people got to a particular spot in their life. And I focused on helping early in career professionals through their journey by learning from others personal and professional journey. You have a very strong background, your brand is very strong in the Microsoft ecosystem we met through iamcp and voices for innovation. You’ve been a clear voice for an advocacy for women in it leadership roles. And so I was hoping you could share some of your path and journey with our listeners today.
Sharan Hildebrand 33:59
Well, thank you For positioning this question, and I want to applaud you and everything that you do to focus on elevating that next generation of leader and that includes female leader as well. So thank you for that. Vince. really admire and respect that about you. It was interesting. I just had this question or I answered a similarly flavor question last week as within Hitachi solutions. We have recently launched a group called Kanzi women. Hitachi konza is our corporate social responsibility platform where we bring people together we connect others throughout the organization beyond just what we’re doing in our day jobs. Confident women is a group that we recently launched within Hitachi solutions to provide women a total platform, a complete platform where they can that they can turn to for advice, support, mentorship across four different pillars. Part of the conversation we had during a panel event we had with quarterly meetings. With a woman was in Itachi this question came up and it brought me back to when I started way back and talked about my days of still going to school and as a computer science or ms major and working in an insurance but I knew I wanted to get closer to personal computing. I was done with the late nights in the lab and and the COBOL programming. I saw back in the day of JD myself there was a advertisement for a office assistant at a microwave computer centers. Do you remember those
Vince Menzione 35:31
microwaves? Well, you mentioned COBOL alone that brought me back way back. But microwave I remember them well.
Sharan Hildebrand 35:37
Yeah, so they were the franchise mom and pop shops sprinkled around greater Chicagoland area and that way before the CWA, you know, the world came about. I thought if I just go and help out on weekends, do some office work, but just put myself in the environment of being around PC based computing. I’m going to learn more when I went in. So I submitted my resume. I went in For the interview, and they said, Well, actually, we’re not here to hire you for the office assistant or offer you the office assistant role. We’d like to talk to you about this Great Plains support role that we have
Vince Menzione 36:11
great names. What a what a brand. I’ve heard that one and
Sharan Hildebrand 36:15
yeah, back back in the sunflower seed days, people who know what I’m talking about are gonna crack a smile on their face, das face version to Dotto menu driven is how I started, I thought, you know, shame on when I look back at that person. Now, I thought shame on me, that I didn’t realize myself that I could apply for that job. I thought I had to go to my parole agent be an officer system. They recognized, you know, based on what I’ve done a little bit of like database coding at Amazon and then with my degree, and some other part time jobs that they were willing to invest in me and send me to Great Plains University and get me trained. So then I could go and do pre sales demos, then I would do the implementation. I did the training. And that’s what really set me on my path. At that same time, there was a woman who was delivering training classes. That was a big revenue generator for them. When doing demos, Deb came to me and she said, Have you ever thought about like doing a one to many like we can do an actual class and you can bring all these people in to learn about Great Plains at the same time. And that sent me on my path to training and building confidence in that area. So when I talk about how I got started, another one of my mantras is everything happens for a reason. And the advice I’d give back to that 22 year old girl would be go for that great plains job. You don’t have to be an office assistant, but then that found me my mentor, and Deb Caldera. And then I ended up working for her for seven years, she branched off and created her own business and we wrote training programs, deliver training, and then I actually brought the Great Plains sales ability into her organization so we can diversify our revenue a little bit and we started we became a Great Plains reseller as well. And that’s when I fell in love with sales. So love the delivery side, but love connecting with customers. Again, I believe that mentorship and focusing on the next generation of female leader regardless if you are at a high school, college re entering the workforce phase is so important because that’s really what put me on my path was starting to work at micro age and meeting a strong female woman who pulled me along for seven years and gave me a great foundation.
Vince Menzione 38:26
And well, Great Plains was just such a great partner play. I mean, they got partner very early on before Microsoft acquired them as well. They had such a strong ecosystem of partners. So I guess you learned a little bit there about the whole partnering component with Great Plains. Tell me a little bit more about this role model like Was there any specific advice or attributes that she brought to the table that you learned from?
Sharan Hildebrand 38:48
Oh, I think it’s, it was good my first experience and the power of mentorship. I always saw Deb stand up for herself stand up for the business and even though we were doing training, we were Doing technical training. And you know, as a thing for us of all of four, five foot four, maybe if she was was that tall, but she had a she stood like she was seven feet. So when she came in, she commanded to own the room, she had a strong presence. And so she taught me the importance of and that one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve received during that timeframe was if you’re going into a situation a board meeting or something where situation where it might be a little adverse, you’re nervous about walk in the room, like you own the place, coat yourself, go through that affirmation. So she would say that there’s a couple times where we would be going into customers, we had one for one customer satisfaction issue, and she wanted me to lead the conversation and I had just nervous as all get out, you know, again, at that time, I was 2425. And she said, You walk into that room, if you own the place. You sit down, look them in the eye, you always know more than they do about our business and What we do, and I’ve just, I’ve never get a little emotional. I’ve never forgot that piece of advice. That’s that’s actually carried me through a couple tough meetings I know that I was going into so walk in like the only place you always know more than they do and it’s just a good a good confidence builder.
Vince Menzione 40:18
That’s great advice for any anyone listening especially those you know, there’s this whole conversation about fake it till you make it or you know, the imposter syndrome, right? Many of us feel like we’re so new to a role or maybe we don’t know as much we feel like an imposter in our own skin at times. So that’s really terrific.
Sharan Hildebrand 40:35
And it was a perfect balance. It wasn’t walk in and be arrogant. It was more of a personal affirmation of you’ve got this you got to this point, you have your seat at the table. You deserve that seat at the table. It helped. It helped me not spiral and question myself and think backwards and lose confidence in myself. I knew what my capabilities were. That’s why I love them. You always know more than they do. Even if I don’t point about it something specific, reminding myself of that, I think was, again, it’s a cash we’re talking, you know, 30 years I’ve had that advice. Well, you
Vince Menzione 41:10
strike me as such a strong business leader. And I know you play a role. And we talked about women and technology. We talked about amcp and being on panels and in discussions, and you serve in several of these leadership roles across these organizations and you, you started up your own organization. Msh empowers, I believe, can you talk to our listeners a little bit about the work that you do to help other women either get into tech, or get back into the workforce.
Sharan Hildebrand 41:38
So thank you for bringing that up. So Msh empowers our MTA is a community and a platform that I’m building to help women re entering the workforce get connected to jobs and technology. I have had the pleasure and great fortune to work with organizations like the wit network, women in cloud and now we’re On Bonnie’s board, the women’s executive channel advisory board, all with all focused on creating more opportunities for women to get into tech and stay in tech. But when I take a look at the focus of a lot of the programs, and again, they’re all outstanding, common denominator was mentorship. How can we make sure that girls young women stay connected and interested in STEM roles? It’s known that back all the way rewind to Grammar School, as early as kindergarten children, boys and girls associate jobs and career paths with boys jobs and girls jobs. So that wiring starts so young and again, we could have a whole other podcast about the impact of being working in technology in a male dominated industry, and how that how the attitudes and even more more importantly the unbiased, unbiased consciousness that decisions that take place still hold women back.
Vince Menzione 42:54
You know, we bring up something that resonated really strongly with me right because when you when you go to school or you send your child to school, it’s the generation earlier that’s provided the coaching and the learning to that student. And there’s some unconscious biases from previous generations, right? Like, oh, john is going to be a doctor and Sally is going to be a nurse.
Sharan Hildebrand 43:15
Absolutely. It starts young. And as you work through stem, it doesn’t go away. And you know, we also as women, it’s known that once women if you do stay in your STEM career, once you hit your mid 30s, to be 3% of women leave their STEM careers. And that 53% it’s not only 20% of those 53 are leaving because they want to stay home or they want to start a family. So that means that more than 50% of those women who are leaving are leaving because they don’t feel supported. There’s a lack of female leaders or mentors to kind of pull them up the ladder so that that stat and that’s pretty that’s like within the last, I don’t know 910 months. New is pretty current. So you know, once it starts, unfortunately the older women get, it stops and drops off pretty heavily for for two reasons. So let’s say that you do leave to go get back to me if you do leave because you want to either start a family, raise a family, maybe you have to care for a parent that’s actually more prevalent than I realized, in talking with different women. You’re skilled you were managing a team of 20 people as a director of a PMO before you left, and now 15 years later, if you’re an empty nester, you have a skills gap you have a need to explain the last 15 years on your resume. Your confidence levels are perhaps low enough, perhaps they definitely are low because you know, technology has changed. You’ve lost your network, where do I even start? So a lot of these very qualified capable women that would just need a little bit of shepherding and training end up taking jobs that are well beneath their skill set, because they either have to go back to work They just want to go back to work and and do something different. Mc is about taking, focusing on the pool of women that are in that position in helping accelerate them to a leadership role, getting them back into the place where they left or close to where they left in technology. Another part of that program so we have this pool of women that don’t know where to start don’t have a networks was providing a platform to connect them with mentors and networks. So they can start to build some confidence, have their resume reviewed, get professional coaching, and then another piece of it is step out and stay connected. So when I thought about this one, okay, so we can, you know, stick our finger in the dam and we can try to, you know, stop the flood of women not going back to the high level or management technology roles. How can we prevent that? How can we make sure that that stays that stays plugged and step out and stay connected, is for those women that want to take a break that need to stay home to take care of an aging parent or you know something? happens at in their personal life. They it’s keeping them connected and tethered to the workforce. So again, via networking, connecting to other connecting them to other external communications and organizations, so that when they’re ready to go back to work, they don’t have as big of a hill decline as some of the women who completely disconnected and didn’t have any resources at the time, you know, 1520 years ago, Pat,
Vince Menzione 46:26
this is terrific. And I’m going to provide links to them in our show notes if people want to reach out and it’s, I’m assuming it’s a national organization, and how do you connect with each of these individuals?
Sharan Hildebrand 46:37
So we’re starting to platform right now have you filled out a form and you can raise your hand to be a mentor or a mentee or both. There’s also a resources of building resources page where we have a variety of videos and podcasts and articles. Depending on the what we try to do is curate and make it easy for you to focus on where I’m At my stage of life, what my concerns are, depending on the area of technology I want to read and I’ll go back into, make it easy for you to find that piece of information to just further educate yourself, get yourself more comfortable to become part of the network and, and the community overall. We’re also asking for contributors. So there’s I’ve found in met, a number of women who have a voice would want to stay home, want to write a blog, want to talk about, you know, their journey, as they work through it. And so that opportunity exists for them to connect as well.
Vince Menzione 47:35
That’s really terrific. And I’m gonna raise my hand and offer a be a mentor for anyone out there with your organization. So we’ll talk about that offline. But I think what you’re doing is just so impactful. So
Sharan Hildebrand 47:44
thank you, man.
Vince Menzione 47:47
I’m excited by it. I you know, I believe very strongly in this whole area, and we need to overcome some challenges that we’ve had systemically you know, the men in the room conversation right mansplaining. I’ve heard it described as, there’s still Some unconscious biases that still exists for women in technology. There’s the whole conversation you’ve you’ve had about, like people coming back in women coming back into the workforce or needing to take that pause and come back. And you know, I think there’s the whole area around the skills development. Networking is just so important right now. We’re all using LinkedIn and other technologies to do that more effectively. And so some of those skills that some people they’ve been away for years don’t have, you know,
Sharan Hildebrand 48:25
if you if you’ll grant me a couple of minutes here, there’s a story I love to share for really, any men and women on the on the listening to your podcast. I had the pleasure of moderating a panel a couple years ago, the title was the male perspective women it in leadership, one of the men was a vice president and his organization and he shared a story and this is where and how I became so aware of unconscious bias. And he said that he the team that he was on, they pride themselves in the company prides themselves on being very diverse, almost 50% Female and this was a technology company. And they had a bring your kid to Work Day. On his team, it was five or six, there was one woman, and then their manager. And Yep, doing, you know, going through the typical exercises, what you do want to bring your kid to work day, they had a break. And one of their breaks. You know, there were some younger kids that were getting a little unruly, and they were standing together as a team in their pod. And the manager turned to the woman, the one woman and the group and said, Would you mind taking care of those kids just keeping them quiet while we regroup? And this gentleman said he any door to his manager, he said he respected them. You know, they talked a lot again about the importance of promoting diversity and inclusion within their organization. And he said after that happened, he went to him and he said, Do you realize what you did? And the man was horrified, as stories told, did not realize it. Apologize. And I just think that happens so much and as progressive and open minded and As the men in STEM in leadership roles in STEM fields think they are that unconscious bias takes over Sunday. So it’s a pretty simple store. I think that says a lot.
Vince Menzione 50:10
Yeah, by the way, it sounded like a laugh. But it was just sort of, maybe it was a recognition more than anything else that that happens still today. And I think back about like asking the woman in the room to get the coffee for everyone, right. And I remember those examples from my past. So really great. That’s a really great example, Sharon, and we could go on for hours, we, we do have a compressed amount of time, I recognize how compressed your schedule, this is such a busy time with what I call Microsoft summer working across all the organizations to get ready to engage for the new fiscal year. And so I do appreciate and so excited that you’ve been here today and took the time to share your story with our audience. I know we talked about books, and I’m going to just I want to end on this note because I know you and I talked about a book that you’ve read and gifted often and could you share that with our listeners?
Sharan Hildebrand 50:59
You bet I have Carrie Staver from pair Aveda to thing for this. We started my first virtual book club buddy. And we were we met at a Microsoft conference just the two of us didn’t know anybody conversation went to Are you a reader? And he said this might sound unusual, but I have a book I want to send you and it’s called getting naked. So getting naked is a business fable written by Patrick lencioni, who has written a sea of amazing business fable books, books that convey a specific message or purpose, but it’s told in a very interesting and entertaining way. And getting naked is all about being vulnerable. And it was especially where I was at my sales management career at that time. That’s a story about the monster consultancy that continues to lose deals to the mom and pop shop and how is this happening? So you as you read through the book, and I still encourage you to read the book. I know spoiler alert here, you learn that one of the secrets of the small consultancy is to go into a meeting, unprepared by design, you know, not grossly unprepared, but instead of having five people attached to you, and 12, PowerPoint and hard copies of everything, and we’re going to go through the checklist, go in with the notebook and a piece of paper. Because as salespeople or whenever you’re trying to promote or pitch something, your audience knows that they’re being pitched or when they’re going to be pitched. And so they automatically put some guards up some blocks. But when you go in somewhat vulnerable by design, there’s energy around that and your audience will pick up on that. And what happens is, the person sitting on the other side of the table will start to let down their guard as well. And then you get to connect with them on a different level beyond just this is why my product or service is so good for you. So it was I didn’t see it coming the messaging and as I read through it, it’s there are lessons that I still I still Gosh, it’s been it’s been 15 years. There’s lessons I still apply tonight, my credit job today.
Vince Menzione 53:01
That’s a really great recommendation. And we will share links to that in our show notes getting naked by Patrick lencioni. I love the example of you know, letting your guard down. It reminds me of the conversation that lawn our mutual friend Lonnie and I had regarding an authentic conversation. Sharon, I want to thank you again for joining me today for an authentic conversation. I so enjoyed having you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering. Any last thoughts you want to share with our listeners before we go?
Sharan Hildebrand 53:30
First, I want to thank you, Vince for the opportunity to talk about so many things that are personally important to me from my career and the difference that we’re trying to make Hitachi down through the impact and my goals and hopes for the work that I’m doing with women and technology. So thank you for, again, this platform to share this.
Unknown Speaker 53:50
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. dot com slash Ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partnering
Transcribed by https://otter.ai