91 – Importance of Agility to Partner Success and Optimization in 2021.

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For this episode of the podcast, I am pleased to welcome Anne McClelland, the Vice President of XaaS Channel Optimization Research for Technology & Services Industry Association or TSIA. In her role at TSIA, Anne works closely with member companies to deliver research and advisory services that help them achieve success and optimization for their partner channels and drive incremental revenue at scale for XaaS offerings.

I invited Anne because she focuses on the emerging XAAS (as a service) market and has a perspective valuable to this ecosystem, including the importance of Agility to Partner Success and Optimization in 2021.

Anne and I both came from Partner Leadership roles at Microsoft and she has over 25 years of experience focused on channel and partner transformation to deliver innovative go-to-market strategies and develop new models to drive incremental revenue and reach.

During her career as a global partner and channels executive, Anne has built new partner organizations from the ground up, driven revenue from new partner communities, and launched programs and tools to support these partner efforts. She has held leadership roles in a diverse set of companies including Blue Prism, Cisco, Red Hat, Microsoft, and IBM.

In this episode we discuss what she has seen since this past year, trends and research her company has created that will be of great value to our listeners, and where organizations need to focus to optimize success in 2021.

I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed my time with Anne McClelland.

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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.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Ultimate Partnerships. Ultimate Partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships. Get Partnerships Right – Optimize for Success – Deliver Results – Ultimate Partnerships.

Transcription By Otter.AI – Please Pardon Typos Below

Anne McClelland  0:00 

I think companies are able to be agile like we talked about earlier and continue to assess and reassess their positions and compare that to what’s happening around them. So keep your eyes open, those folks will do their best.

Announcer  0:13 

Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering. In this podcast Vince Menzione. a proven industry sales and partner executive brings together technology leaders in this forum to discuss transformational trends and to deconstruct successful strategies to thrive and survive in the rapid age of cloud transformation. And now, your host, Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione  0:43 

Welcome, or Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and as we kick off the four-year anniversary of this podcast, I’m thankful to all of the amazing thought and business leaders who’ve come to this podcast to share principles, success strategies, and best practices that help technology organizations thrive during this age of change and transformation. for this episode of the series, it was really great to welcome and McClelland the VP of research for as the service channel optimization at technology services industry association or TSIA a and I both come from Microsoft, and she has over 25 years’ experience focused on channel and partner transformation to deliver innovative go to market strategies and develop new models to drive incremental revenue and reach. I invited Anne because she focuses on the emerging as a service market and has a unique perspective valuable to this ecosystem. In this episode, we discuss what you saw this past year trends and research that will be of great value and where organizations need to focus to optimize success in 2021. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed my time with Anne McClelland. And welcome to the podcast.

Anne McClelland  2:09 

Paul, thank you so much fans, and it’s great to be here with you today.

Vince Menzione  2:13 

I am so excited to have you as a guest here on Ultimate Guide to Partnering. You know, we’ve been discussing having you on for quite some time now. And with all of the change and transformation we’ve been seeing. I’m really excited to have you here today.

Anne McClelland  2:27 

I’m looking forward to it as well. It should be fun.

Vince Menzione  2:31 

So for our listeners who may not know and McClelland Can you tell our listeners a little bit about TSIA a, your role there and your background?

Anne McClelland  2:41 

Sure, yeah. And I realized that a lot of folks in the partner ecosystem side of the business don’t know TSIA, we work quite a bit with professional services sides of tech companies, the customer success side, but this is new that we’re working with the partner ecosystem side. Technology, and services industry association is what TSIA stands for. So we’re actually a for profit Association. We’re membership based. But research is really our core. That’s really the heart of our business. And we focus our research on business practices. And specifically, we want to tease out what practices are delivering results for our member companies. And so we’re kind of different from some of the other research firms. We don’t compare tech companies to one another. We don’t dive into text segments and rank companies. But we really focus on what are the best and emerging practices that are moving the needle in the tech industry in various domain areas. So when I say a domain area, we have research practice domains, such as managed services. So if you run a managed services business, and you want help building really a gold standard, managed services business, we have a research practice and years of research around managed services. So our customers are tech companies. So you name it large, medium, small tech companies, also vertical tech companies, industrial automation companies, healthcare, tech, etc. And so we do research first and foremost, but we also build communities. So we look at building out communities of leaders within these practice domains. And we have annual events. We’ve got a spring and fall conference. Our next conference is virtual, of course, first week of May. And there’s an entire track that I will be running on the partner channel ecosystem. And my community is built of partner and channel leaders. And then we also deliver advisory services, but we were not consultants per se. We deliver I call it the 15,000 foot to 30,000 foot level of consulting services to help our members get their strategies underway. And then we also have relationships with consulting Alliance partners. So if our members want to really just literally roll up their sleeves and build up a new program and launch that to their regions, we have consulting Alliance partners who can deliver that last mile, I head up a relatively new research practice that’s focused on the partner channel ecosystem. But specifically, I am focused on what is needed in the as the service transformation that the tech industry is going through. And as you know, tech companies are all in the process of going through this journey, either they came from maybe either a, what I’ll call a traditional hardware background, or a traditional software product background. And they’re moving into delivering as a service consumption offerings, subscription offerings, or potentially they’re born in the cloud companies. And they’re really honing in and perfecting their go to market model around the partner channel ecosystem. I focus on that domain. So that is really where my research is centered. I do help our members with optimal ecosystem design to support the transformation from the traditional channel models to the future technology models. And my research includes everything from helping companies define an optimal channel strategy to what are the new metrics KPIs that you need to put in place to make sure you’re being successful with your partners? What are the incentives, compensation models that are required? What are the requirements now for portals and tools and marketplaces? How can you help companies make money around this area, because partners need to find new revenue streams, so we, we work on that as well. And I partner with my peer, Laura Fay who runs the acts as a service product management, and building a platform that drives that economic value is really critical. And then what are the new certifications, programs, trainings, enablement that you need to put in place. So that’s really the scope of my role. And I think Lastly, you asked about my background, I bet in the tech industry forever, primarily sales and partner channel sales. But also I’ve had roles, managing development teams, marketing teams, I’ve done product management, I’ve run operations. My career includes various leadership roles at IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, Cisco, and blue prism. And I’ve been leading partner organizations and all of those companies since around

Vince Menzione  7:56 

we intersected at Microsoft, I don’t think we knew each other well. But I do feel like we were in the room at multiple times, probably where I was running the public sector partners strategy, and you were I believe, on the worldwide team.

Anne McClelland  8:08 

I was exactly I ran global ISVs or Yes, the the global industry groups that Yep,

Vince Menzione  8:15 

I do remember that group. Well, so a lot to unpack and talk about today with regards to helping our partners optimize for success. But I’d like to spend a few moments here kind of backing up to last year, what did you see that you didn’t expect to see this past year? This year? We have never experienced before?

Anne McClelland  8:33 

Yeah, that’s a great question. Then since 2012, was definitely a year for the history books. Um, you know, as I think about 2021 of the memories that struck me, you know, and I and I don’t know about you, but my wings were clipped end of February, I think I took my last flight on an airplane.

Vince Menzione  8:51 

Yeah, mine was March first.

Anne McClelland  8:53 

Okay, March 1. Yeah, I was like, I think I came home in time for my mother’s birthday on February 26. And that was it. But you know, one of the memories that really struck me where I called, without a lot of notice a meeting of a phone call with my advisory board and all of us running these practices at TSA. We have advisory boards. Mine is about 20 members, from my 20 company executives from my member cohort. And I call that meeting about one month after the COVID virus had grounded all of us. And it was kind of a surreal experience. I didn’t really have an agenda for the advisory board meeting I normally have I’m super tight on my agendas and buttoned up when I meet with them or any of my members. But this time, I really didn’t. And I just wanted to know, you know, how are you doing? And how are your companies doing and how are your employees doing and how are your partners doing sort of a what you know what’s going on out there? Call. And you know, it was just the most refreshing. And I just, you know, the only words I really kept coming to my mind were the everyone was really real. And and I think in the tech industry, sometimes we’re sort of too buttoned up, or at least we have been in the past. And we’re really kind of formal. And there were just no first of all people were, I mean, the guys were just wearing plain t shirts, the girls were maybe an exercise clothes, kids dogs in the background, you know, some of the ladies didn’t have much makeup on. And we just really honed in on family, on employees, on our partners on our customers. And they shared ideas that they had, and that they were implementing, and and they had just lots of creativity, where they were thinking about giving, and what could they do, what could they give that they had, and this was across their companies, this kind of mindset was coming from their CEOs. And they were reaching out to not only their customer base, but the world at large, with ways that they could give and share their technology and share their creativity and share innovation. So it just really was an amazing meeting. And I have really thought back on that. But you know, to answer your question on an Uber level, and to kind of bring it back to sort of the whole of 2020. You know, what I’ve seen in spades. And we have some research around this that we launched in 2020 is companies that were not really paying attention or investing in certain really critical areas prior to COVID. Like their transformation as a service as an example, either had an oh crap moment in the spring of 2020, because they had not moved to as a service. Or they immediately did a student body right to invest in it. It was a good time to do that. Because frankly, there was so much up in the air economically, there was such a big pause in the market, everyone was taking a big, a big break to try to re reassess where they were and maybe think about new strategies and new plans. And customer spending was a bit pause partner execution was paused. So if there was a time to switch gears 2020 was a great time to switch gears if they hadn’t been caught up to those trends. So we’ve seen some of these other things that have hit the market in a super accelerated fashion in 2020. At tsaa. We’ve seen that things like the digitization of industries, you know, we’ve had technology and finance, you know, this, or healthcare, telehealth for a long time. I mean, probably 10 years. And we’ve been kind of you know, we maintain the tech industry and myself included when I worked at vendor companies been selling, you know, and trying to sell these industry solutions that were really cutting edge. But the customers just weren’t biting on things like telehealth it was sort of, yeah, interesting. We get it, but we don’t need it. Well, guess what 2020 you know, even my mother in her late 80s, all of a sudden, was having telehealth visits with her, you know, her primary care physician. So this digital technology transformation in industries just you know, completely did a flip on 180. So, partners had to play catch up, vendors had to play catch up, it really was an interesting time to see some of these trends that were kind of nascent prior to 2020. Just flip to an acceleration.

Vince Menzione  13:55 

In our head very similar experiences. As you were speaking, I was thinking about my own partner advisory board meeting. That’s the one I left on March 1, and getting that same group together. And that how are you doing conversation? No agenda, lots of discussion, like how can we solve for this? What could we do in our industry to help our our constituents or clients and just this kind of coming together, if you will, and then people again, the whole, I guess this acceptance that hey, we’re all working remote now. And then also just the need and the understanding to I think that the transformation is happening fast and Partnering with other organizations coming together for the greater good or to solve for an issue or to accelerate a solution set is critical right now. Right, would you?

Anne McClelland  14:42 

Absolutely, yeah. And I think we’re seeing that across the board, just with this whole rise to digital sales, and the need to deliver remote services because we can’t go on prem. And so companies that weren’t in that space prior to COVID are, you know, absolutely must be in that space now?

Vince Menzione  15:04 

So what are your predictions now for our listeners, the channel for 2021. Now that we’ve made the leap from 2020,

Anne McClelland  15:12 

yeah, well, the winners are going to be the companies that are really moving away from selling, and whether it’s selling through their own people or selling through their partners in get away from the product focus motion into a true selling outcomes selling value, and completely pivoting to as a service as a go to market motion. So not just a product motion, but a true go to market motion. So the entire company needs to go there. And a great example is what you know what Satya Nadella and also a Gabriella Schuster have done at Microsoft, really, the entire company has pivoted there, and they’re taking their partners with them who really want to transform, you know, they, they also may be willing to leave partners behind who don’t want to come along on the journey. And that’s tough to do. Your partners of the past the partners, what is the saying, What got you here may not get you there. And that may be true of your partner ecosystem as well. So they really need to be able to rethink how they’re going to market. And as I mentioned, we’ve done research through 2020, we set up this, and folks can check it out if you like if you go to our website, we have a COVID materials or COVID resources section, and you don’t have to be a member to get access to this. We set up a rapid research response survey mechanism that we’ve been using throughout the year. And we’re still using to generate very brief surveys that allow you to take a pulse on different issues. And so you know, you can look at that. But I think you’ll also get a sense from the data we’ve collected where TSIA a is thinking relative to our predictions for the year 2021. But But what we see happening really is this pivot, again, pivot to the x as a service transformation, which we already discussed a little bit, but also this pivot to assuring that you’re not thinking about products, but really thinking about outcomes, really thinking about value realization. And you’re helping your partners to do this with you, as well. And I’m also seeing when I look at the partner ecosystem, and I talked about this in some of my webinars in 2020 is we’re really seeing the rise of the sell with partner motion. So I’ve always in my past like to look at sell through sale to and sell with, as the three partner motions that have been prevalent in the marketplace. The sell through motion has always in the past, then really the predominant motion that we all know and love through the resellers and distributors and the traditional channel and the sell to motion. Now we’re seeing that as being a critical motion, as you as a vendor deal with managed service provider companies and other hosted cloud providers, as well as embedded ISVs who want to take your technology and put it within their solution and wrapper it. So the sell to motion works for that as well. But the cell with motion is fascinating because we’re seeing this growth and rise of cell width and all different. I call them life forms, sliding into cell with everything from internet marketing companies to ISVs to gsis to various types of niche consultants within verticals. So it’s really interesting to see that and and then also coming back to this notion of this growth of delivering outcomes and customers not wanting to pay for these massive deals upfront, whether they’re coming through a GSI that maybe packaging a large deal upfront, or huge, multi million dollar deal. Customers really are expecting now to pay for consumption and pay for value. And so some of these partners are really needing to rethink their delivery models, and how are they going to shift their business models and shift their revenue attainment in order to be focused more on delivering outcomes and delivering value quickly and early. So the customers will want to pay them for those outcomes and that value. So it’s a mindset shift. I talk more about it in my State of the industry paper that I’ll be launching here to the marketplace than any one listening to your podcast can get to my State of the industry paper that will come out in the end of January timeframe. I’ll get more into that and share some of my research on this area.

Vince Menzione  20:10 

I would love to share links for our listeners, this is fascinating. You mentioned a few things I want to highlight. First of all, mindset is what I believe is core to the success of any partnership like mindset is, to me is fundamental. Right, I’ve talked about Satya Nadella and what he did at Microsoft and mindfulness and mindset Carol Dweck book, but you also brought up a couple of the things that tie into mindfulness or mindset to me. One is around the pivot of the organization from a financial model, right, I think that’s where a lot of organizations are still struggling with the subscription model versus just selling a product and having a one time or a different model. And then the other pieces around moving from the sell through, which is you know, we kind of just we got a channel we got bronze, silver gold, they would just like light them up and let them go to this sell with model. Can you help our listeners understand, like, what is some of the work you’re doing? guidance you’re providing for those organizations in those two areas? Maybe another level deep on this?

Anne McClelland  21:09 

Yeah, no, that’s a great question. And for my members of my practice, I, they get access to all the research that I run. And so I’ve run recently, several different research studies, I have one in market right now around the investment that companies are making in both sales and marketing around partner, the partner ecosystem for x as a service, I have data that I collected in mid 2020, around the partner trends in x as a service, I also have a fairly recent study that I completed around this outcomes and value realization, and I get on the sell with sell through sale to, you know, and who’s doing what, and it is fascinating, because what I see happening, number one, companies that are born in the cloud, are definitely leveraging the cell with motion, especially for the front end part of the sales cycle. And they also are more able to articulate the outcomes that they are achieving through the partner ecosystem and actually quantify them. So that’s really interesting, too, because I think, you know, I personally have been involved in my past when I was at Microsoft, before I took the role where you knew me, I ran operations and marketing for the group that had the relationships with the VCs and the startups. And I had a conversation with a VC back then about, you know, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could actually have startups be compensated, when customers actually achieved their outcomes, and we get cents on the dollar, you know, have those outcomes achieved. Now, that’s sort of a Nirvana thing. It’s sort of way out there. But the concept is where the markets going. And that’s where the customers heads are going to your point on the mindset, the customers heads, they’re acting like consumers. And you know, you and I, and my adult children, as an example, when they buy a service, whether it’s Netflix, or if they’re subscribed to Hulu, you know, they have expectations of the value they’re going to receive from those services, then if they don’t receive the value, if they can’t get the programming that they really want, they’ll just end it. And we have to recognize that I know a lot of my peers in the industry are talking about this as well, we have got to meaning vendors, and I keep saying we with vendors, I wasn’t wasn’t too long ago, I myself was on the vendor side, we have got to recognize that the buyers of our customers are acting like consumers. And so when you put yourself in their shoes, and you’re a vendor, and you think about what do I do as a consumer, what are my expectations in the sales cycle, I expect to get the value I expect to be able to on ramp into the technology easily. I if I don’t like it, I expect to be able to pull out without a penalty. And I you know, I have all these preconceived expectations of how easy it will be to interact with your technology. So this mindset of you know, I’m going to build the most amazing product and they will come kind of thing is not necessarily the winning strategy anymore. So you really have to shift that mindset and recognize your competitions moving at lightning speed. If you were ignoring those startups, if you’re ignoring those PE backed companies because you think they’re kind of ankle biters out there in the industry, and you’re, you know, a big vendor, I really recommend that you get take your blinders off, look at what’s going on in in the marketplace and shift your mindset, shift your behavior and teach your people that there it’s okay to move fast, make mistakes, learn from them, and continue to get better and better at what you’re doing and what you’re delivering and how you go to market.

Vince Menzione  25:15 

I love what you had to say about fail fast is specifically a mindset. that’s a that’s a mantra for me around mindset as well. Now, with the SAS software companies, I find have an easier path because there are already SAS software companies, but there’s also the traditional software companies. And we saw this at Microsoft, right, the the push to Azure, going from office as an enterprise agreement to as a service. Do you feel like there’s some that are still getting stuck there with that transition?

Anne McClelland  25:44 

Yeah, yeah, they are. And, you know, it’s tricky. As you know, Vince folks have, you’ve got an install base, right. So you’ve got a massive install base that maybe are on your traditional product, but you recognize that your competition is coming in with like I was talking about a minute ago, easy to use, easy to start a pilot easy to get some value, easy to grow, kind of solutions with little risk on the customer side. So the competition is out there. And if you’re just trying to be in a protect mode of your install base on your traditional product, and you haven’t really thought through the migration strategy, of how do you get your traditional product based customers over to your new as a service offerings, you really do have a formidable problem, you know, some of the strategies I’ve seen that have worked with member companies is that they will pivot their product investment to the as a service offerings, and they will freeze the traditional offerings so that they will make it more attractive, from a feature function perspective, to be on the new offerings than stay on the traditional offerings. That’s a hard thing to do. Because you’re kind of putting the cash cow in the pasture and setting it aside, and you’re really investing in the new offerings. And so doing that is a way to pivot. But also, then you have to handhold those customers off that old offering onto the new offering, you need to think about financially, how you’re going to make that migration, it is a business model shift for you as a vendor. It’s also a business model shift for the partners that you’re working with. One of the other things that we talked about at tsaa is, you know, companies, as you know, you asked in your question, they need to move from product focused to what we contextualize as platform focused. And so when we think of different platforms, whether it’s, you know, it’s a platform like a Dell boomi as an example, you know, you’re building out a platform and looking at how to collect and engage partners to integrate into your platform. But then the next stage of that is ecosystem focused. And as you think about moving to being and it really is a stair step, to go from product focus to platform focus to ecosystem focused, and we’re going to be doing some research in 2021. And beyond on moving into platform focused and ecosystem focus, because it’s, it’s not just a go to market motion, right? It has to do with the product as well, the product has got to be designed to be a platform, or it’s got to be designed to host an ecosystem. And you know, you think about an Azure ecosystem, you know, that was really a brilliant pivot, where Microsoft took their partners with them into their ecosystem that they now have, but it was definitely a lot of hard work. And a lot of years, this does not happen with the, you know, flip of a switch, right?

Vince Menzione  28:54 

Yeah. And you bring up a really great point around ecosystems and the consumerization of the technology, right? So I had another guest recently talk about it’s analogous to buying a car, like you might talk to some friends you might go to if you’re doing a lot of work online, or in the technology space, maybe there’s five seats at the table. And you’re getting advice from various influencers, right, maybe it’s your systems integrator that’s doing your IT infrastructure, maybe it’s another ISP vendor that is in the same space or delivering a complete solution. And you’re going to ask them, like, Who should I have solved this solution set? Right? And you need to have you need to be known throughout your ecosystem. You need to have partnerships with all of those influencers, whether they be you know, the hyper scalars the supernovas, the systems integrators, the influencers that deliver maybe consulting services or other other technologies or other technology providers that have a complimentary solution set.

Unknown Speaker  29:51 

Yep, exactly. Exactly.

Vince Menzione  29:53 

So the world is changing dramatically from the old days where, you know, we used to deliver I used to call it the you know, it started in 1981 with the bars, and you know, you deliver a printer, you put together a PC, you do a networking and you have packaged software. Right, and I buy everything from you. It’s the world has evolved amazingly, over the last several years.

Unknown Speaker  30:15 

Yeah, it’s your house. Yes.

Vince Menzione  30:17 

So what other daunting challenges do you believe our partners face today?

Anne McClelland  30:21 

Mm hmm. Well, you know, I think you kind of inferred, one of the issues that I believe is gonna be kind of the critical issue to overcome. For the partners, I think they’re, you know, there’s an old guard out there in the partner companies, not all of them, of course, but also at the vendors. So there’s this kind of edit. It’s easy. It’s hard to teach old dogs New Tricks, and You kind of have some of that going on, still in our partner companies, as well as our vendor companies. And the old dogs need to want to learn new tricks, or, frankly, they need to retire, or find a different role. If you cannot change the way you think about everything, including your compensation, your metrics, your KPIs, your partner engagement, your partner capabilities you need for success, because you’re not just you know, the old model was, we use this land adopt expand, renew land, being that front end, I’ve closed the sale, but then you drive adoption. And as a service, you’re driving upsell and cross sell, that’s the expand, and you’re driving renewal, as a partner company, you know, the old model was land, land, land, land, land, land, land, you know, rinse and repeat? Well, now it’s the partners need to think about driving an entire lifecycle relationship with customers, and they may not have the right people on board. And if you try to keep doing the old things, the old way and compensate the old way, instead of rethinking compensation internally at your partner company, that can be your biggest challenge. So you’ve got to get rid of the legacy mindset. If you can’t, you know, you’ve got to put new people in, who will break glass and get things accomplished with partner companies. And you’ve got to do this fast. You know, that’s the other thing. I think, from a daunting challenge, Vince, I know for myself working in large tech companies in the past, you can kind of get your blinders on. And you’re, you know, you’re kind of tangled up in internal infrastructure and bureaucracy sometimes, and you can’t move fast. Companies have got to move

Vince Menzione  32:34 

fast. Yep, I agree. We had this conversation with partners when I was still at Microsoft. And actually, I’m going back now, seven or eight years when when the move started to happen to the cloud. And we said, we’re going to take away the traditional models, we’re going to take away the transactional fees, we’re going to take away the incentives on the back end, you’re going to also know though, but on the front end, and on the back end, there’s a lot of value that you can provide and charge for this higher margin better premium for you to grow your business. And we not we want you to move there. We had a lot of those conversations. I’ve seen a lot of that happen, that transformation happen. But I think to your point, it’s still there’s still the old model and the old guard out there that want to do things the old way and are pivoting.

Anne McClelland  33:17 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. One of the examples I like to use, you know, and you may not think this is a good example. But Facebook, to me is a great example that, you know, I think we don’t recognize the fact that the way they monetize their company, Facebook is through the partners, you and I were we think we’re the consumers were the customer, but really, we’re not. We’re the product of facebook, facebook is leveraging their partners, they have integration partners, they have marketing partners, they have data partners, they have all these different partner types. And that’s where they make their money. And so it flips our model on its head. Because we you know, we don’t recognize data now is the new currency. In our world of Partnering partners need data from vendors, vendors need data from partners, and leveraging data across the entities is really critical instead of being protective about it. And just rethinking how you’re going to make money. And and how partners can help you make money to make the pie bigger for everybody, for your partners and for yourselves is really critical.

Vince Menzione  34:33 

That’s a really great point. And we could spend a lot of time here on this particular aspect. But we’ll want people to come back to you. And I think we’ll probably have you back on again, maybe a midpoint in the year to talk more about this because I see it as well. I’d like to pivot now on you and your personal journey. As you know, I’ve had some amazing guests on here. I’ve had Gabrielle Schuster talk about the gender gap. I’ve had Lonnie Phillips talk about the racial gap You came out a woman in technology, you have a technology background. So you know, there’s this gap that exists in our ecosystem in our tech world, around women in tech. In fact, it’s gone from 36% in the 90s, down to 27%. And now we’re hearing that more women are exiting the tech world because they have to stay at home and help with education, especially with COVID, helping the children out with their learning. And so I want to learn a little bit more about what that journey was like for you. You have a background and call stem, you know, science, technology, engineering and math. And then you made a journey into the tech world. Can you tell us a little bit about that rise?

Anne McClelland  35:37 

Yeah, sir. Thanks for the opportunity to do that. I am Yeah, I started in the tech industry as a systems engineer, as I mentioned, and oftentimes, I was the only woman walking around the IT department of my customers with the exception of the secretaries. So, you know, it was for me, just a really interesting journey, I really always felt like I could push the envelope and continue to learn and grow, have, from a personal background.

A background where we had moved around a lot when I was growing up. And so I was not afraid to start new relationships, try new things, do new things. And so for me, being a woman in a in a man’s world, and sometimes I will speak with college students and graduate students about this, What’s it like being a woman in a man’s world? And how can you position yourself at the table equally, and speak up but not, you know, not do so in a way that bothers people, but do so in a way that is prominent and get your voice out there? You know, I think it was for me, because there were so few women on the what I’ll call the tech side, or the more technical side, it was, for me a really interesting journey to push through that into different roles. I had some amazing opportunities and some wonderful role models. And people who really inspired me back at IBM, for example, Fran O’Sullivan, she ran the PC company and IBM, and, you know, she was I, tiny lady that had a amazing command of the executives at the PC company. You know, it just was for me, I had opportunity to work with her on a special project. So we work directly with each other. And it was just to see someone like that, who obviously was a more of a tech side, leader, female, who could really dig in and get the room to pay attention without being loud or boisterous, or anything, she could command the room. So just learning from other women on how to leverage, you know, our particular traits, and still be able to command the room really was a wonderful experience for me. But back in, you know, in my career, as a woman, it felt like I had to check boxes to move up the career ladder, whereas men I found and this was just my personal opinion, but I found that men could attain roles that they weren’t necessarily completely qualified for, and be pulled up into them. And I think part of that is really changing these days, I see women being pulled more into roles where they are growth roles. And they didn’t complete everything that’s expected for the new role they can grow into it. And in the past, that just seemed harder for women, whereas men seem to be able to be pulled into those growth roles much more naturally. You know, I really don’t think women are facing all these barriers today. So I’ve been super encouraged. I’ve talked with other ladies, leaders in the tech industry and the partner ecosystem side, and I just see that younger women are being brought into these growth roles. I’m also seeing lots of women as channel leaders, you probably see that yourself. And so, you know, I would give advice to folks to really look for mentors who can encourage you coach you give you tough counsel, also, you know, and no matter where you are on your career journey, whether you’re a man or woman or you know you’re a person of color, trying to move up, I just really encourage you to find good mentors to give you that personal counsel. I also just one other note, I did make it a point when I couldn’t find the move I wanted moving up. In a firm I made it a point to look for horizontal moves that allowed me to grow my skills in new disciplines. For example, product develop That was one of the key moves that I made. And this was around the time I was having children. I was a salesperson at the time running a large sales territory in Northern Virginia government. And as you know, public sector, you know, you’re out with the customers during the day, and then you’re doing the proposals that night, it’s a pretty grueling sales role. You know, we were at the point of wanting to start a family. So I took a horizontal role to a product group and started in product management then moved into managing developers. But it was more of a nine to five kind of a situation for me, so I was able to carry on in my career while having kids, but kind of got off that crazy hours, kind of a path. So I do recommend to women who are trying to do you know, that transition to also be a mom to look for horizontal roles that might allow you to grow your skills, but maybe aren’t quite as you know, just from a consumption of ours aren’t aren’t as time consuming as other roles. So I do recommend that as well. You never know where your career can take you. And getting that breadth is going to open up doors. So I recommend that too.

Vince Menzione  41:12 

Yeah, some really sound advice for any of our listeners, right? Whether they be women, people of color, anyone else who’s getting started on their path. What are you doing now for your own mental health and mindfulness?

Anne McClelland  41:25 

Yeah, that’s an interesting one. It’s a it’s a little hard for me as I, I lost my mother in December of 2020. So I kind of went dark for most of the month of December. You know, I’m making up for that time, right now workloads kind of crazy because I, you know, I’ve literally didn’t do email. Fortunately, it was wonderful people at TSA are amazing. And they picked up for me for about, you know, a 20 day period there in December. So with that, you know, I really need to take some significant time for refreshment in 2021. I need a vacation, Oh, my gosh, I need to get away with my husband. And then also, ideally, later in the year, take the whole family on a trip I I’m frustrated, just like a lot of people are about the fact that travel much. So I really want to, you know, get our adult children and their spouses out and take a trip as a family. And I also we got a COVID puppy. So he is a Danish, so if you Google that his father was a English massive, and his mother, a Great Dane. So he’s a monster I call moose. He is, you know, if you had a camera on me, and he came up to me, you could literally, he could be on all fours. And you would see his face that about my shoulder level coming up to the camera. So he’s a big boy. But we take walks in the neighborhood, and during the work day, and then parks on weekends, and try to just get him out, you know, because we can’t have people in, right, we have to get them socialized. Because he’s so big. I want him to not be friendly with people. So we have to get them out, which for me is really good. I love to walk I love to go to the mountains and find waterfalls. That’s kind of the thing I love to do. So you know, just just get out more travel more, exercise more, take more breaks, I think in 2020. That’d be necessary.

Vince Menzione  43:27 

Such great advice around mindfulness. Right. We all need to get out there get fresh air. And yeah, I think we all need a vacation. Come down to Florida. You can live here from North Carolina. Mr. Yeah, we have beautiful what we have sunshine, amongst other things. And I want to thank you, you have been an amazing guest some really terrific perspective and advice for the channel for the vendors for all of us in this ecosystem. Any closing comments or advice you have for our listeners?

Anne McClelland  43:56 

Yeah, just just a few. I mean, firstly, I think this whole partner channel ecosystem story for the as a service transformation in the tech industry is still very much emotion. I think companies, they’re able to be agile, like we talked about earlier, and continue to assess and reassess their positions and compare that to what’s happening around them. So keep your eyes open, those folks will do their best. You know, I think the other thing is really, the folks that are the pace setters in the industry really will be the ones who are not afraid to fail fast, learn and adjust and try again. So like we talked about earlier, your company culture needs to shift to be a culture that allows for that failure, and allows companies to really try new things. Talk to your partners, talk to your customers about things that you want to try get their input, don’t assume that you know what’s best. without talking to them. You’re going to do the best The future, we have our technology and services 50 companies that we measure every quarter. And we’ve been doing this since I think 2008 2009. And of those technology and services 50 back from 2009, I think there are only 22 of those companies that still remain in the index, we bring in a new companies into the index to keep it at 50. But these are the leading technology companies, and we’re so in their day, and now they’re gone. So if you think about that 50 companies did just a little over 10 years ago, only 20 to remain, the rest are gone. So don’t think that that can’t happen to you, you know, you you really have got to be on the ball, things are moving so so fast. And just one other one other thing to let you all know, this month, all of our research executives at TSIA are working on delivering our state of the industry papers for each of our domains. So I really would encourage you all in the coming weeks to look@gsa.com. For our new publications, you don’t have to be a member to get them. That will give you a broad view of our predictions across all of our domains that we have for the tech industry, Thomas law, who runs all of research for tsaa. His state of paper is entitled, the haves and the have nots of the technology industry in 2021. And I’ve read that draft myself, I definitely recommend it my paper on state of the industry. 2021 will also be published in January. And there’s a corresponding webinar on February 3, you can register for and if you can’t attend live, you can listen to the replay. So we’d love to have folks engage more with us engage in the conversations, get into our community online. Again, you don’t need to be a member to engage in our TSIA exchange on our website. So come on and join the conversations at TSA.

Vince Menzione  46:56 

Some great advice, I will provide links in our show notes for all of this. Great and you mentioned some things here. I can’t help but say agility, mindset, some of these things that organizations I’d love to learn about the ones that are still in the on the top 50 and the ones that aren’t there and maybe some learnings there, but we could maybe do that as another episode. Yeah, I want to thank you. This exceeded my expectations. And I so enjoyed having you as a guest today and Ultimate Guide to Partnering.

Anne McClelland  47:24 

Well, thanks so much for this chance to speak with your audience Vince and best wishes to you and your family for a healthy and bright 2021.

Vince Menzione  47:32 

Thank you so much. As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please subscribe on your favorite platform, like comment, tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to Partnering 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 Vin Sam at ultimate dash partnerships.com this episode of the podcast is sponsored by ultimate partnerships. Ultimate partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships. Get partnerships right, optimized for success, deliver results. For more information, go to ultimate dash partnerships.com

Announcer  48:26 

thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to Partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to Partnering.com and facebook.com slash Ultimate Guide to Partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to Partnering

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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