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Chelsea Berlucchi Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®
Effective co-selling, its where the rubber meets the road on the path to successful partnering. In this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering, we delve into the intricate world of co-selling strategies alongside Chelsea Berlucchi, Head of Google Subregional Co-Sell, North America, a trailblazing leader spearheading revenue acceleration and partner expansion throughout North America.
In this episode, you will embark on a journey as Chelsea drives priceless insights into harmonizing company growth initiatives with customer objectives, ensuring flawless integration and delivery. You will gain unparalleled expertise from Chelsea Berlucchi as she imparts actionable tips and recounts real-world experiences aimed at optimizing co-selling opportunities.
Don’t miss out on this chance to enhance your partner collaborations working with Google Cloud and maintain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
What You’ll Learn
- Co-selling strategies and its importance in the partner ecosystem. (0:02)
- Career journey and partnerships in the tech industry. (9:08)
- Career progression and technology sales experience. (13:36)
- Partner ecosystem growth and collaboration. (16:51)
- Building an effective co-selling strategy with Google Cloud. (24:54)
- Partnerships, marketplaces, and personalized sales approaches. (29:33)
- Co-selling strategies with a Google Cloud partner. (37:33)
- Google Cloud Next conference, partner strategy, and dinner party invitations. (42:04)
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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos
Summary Keywords
partner, google cloud, customer, organisation, marketplace, cosell, partner ecosystem, team, year, working, cisco, google, led, talk, solution, called, isv, product, build, chelsea
Vince Menzione 0:02
Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear. And on finding this buyer intent you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Chelsea burr Lucci leads the CO selling function for Google Cloud North America region. And I’m so excited to have her join us as she describes the role of CO selling the importance of the CO selling function, and how organisations like yours can more effectively co sell with Google Cloud. Chelsea, welcome to the podcast. absolutely happy to be here. So we’ve been talking a little bit about your role and how it’s evolved. And I was hoping you could spend some time with our listeners, you’re in a space that I just truly love and work with these partners on, which is on CO selling, and I was hoping you could deep dive for our listeners and viewers about your role and the mission of your organisation at Google. Yeah, absolutely. So as you said, my team does cosell. So right now I’m leading a team. But we call that I’m the head of the our sub regional cosell team for North America. And you and I did get to meet last year, we get to meet at the ISP forum in New York. So hopefully, we get to see you again this summer. Last year, I was really working closely with our ISVs. And I still work very closely with them. A lot of folks in in the ISP organisation do what’s called an ISV specialists role, or they’re what we would name also a partner development manager where they cover a specific ISV. In terms of my team, and my role we do it’s called co sell. So we’re really this team that’s at the front edge. We are working with customers, we’re working with sellers to set a strategy around adopting the partner ecosystem to drive forward. Now I did that last year was hired into that role in April 2022, we had this small but mighty team, which was fabulous. And we really aligned to each of our sub regions in our industries to say, hey, look, we have this opportunity to grow your business and grow your customers business by using our independent software vendors or ISPs and their third party products that run in Google Cloud. Now, this this year, at the beginning of the year, I was asked to take on more of an Extended Scope in my role, which has been very interesting and challenging. All the things at this point. Yeah. And that means that beyond ISC, my team also covers services now. So I’ve taken on a new team of individuals that had been at Google, but really, instead of covering just ice, we are covering that entire partner ecosystem. So again, when a customer comes to us, or when we’re working with our sales organisation, we can say, Hey, what is your strategy to execute this year? And what is that strategy inclusive of the partner ecosystem, we get really good to be the advocates for for our partners and coach our sellers on how to grow sell with with partners along the way. So that’s really the evolution of my role. Since you you saw me last. So things have certainly changed. I would say we’re doing some of the similar motions, just driving more rigour around that whole crew self process here. It’s part of our mission in general. So the partner ecosystem has is really standardise on what that looks like. And as you can imagine, you know, it’s really to work with our partner ecosystem, to make sure our customers are adopting Google Cloud technologies. And although that can be interpreted up and down and how you go after that mission in a couple of different ways, it really helps all different parts and pieces of our partner ecosystem within North America and Google Cloud to drive towards that one thing is really supporting our customers the right way, as they’re trying to adopt more Google Cloud as they’re trying to join a straight with us. Yeah, such an important function. In fact, and I wanted to spotlight on this because a lot of organisations at the hyperscale level, there’s this division of labour, right? So if I’m an ISV, I might have a partner development person or whether whatever the role is called, and they’re really focused in on the business development of that organisation, technological development, maybe the overall arching business strategy. But often what’s missed is this effective co selling piece and I was hoping you just described it, actually. But people don’t always understand what co selling means. Right? So I was hoping we can kind of double click on what is effective co selling and what isn’t it from your perspective? Now this is a great question because I think
Chelsea Berlucchi 5:00
selling ads is a new word to your term, right? We’re hearing it a lot in technology companies, we’re hearing a lot in sales organisations. And we’re starting to see more and more individuals adopt this as even in title and what their their jobs are really entailed to. And so it being that more modern term and its baseline, the simple answer here is CO selling is really when two or more organisations come together to sell a complementary solution to a customer that they’ve identify. And we see this where, for an example, again, we’ve talked about ISVs, which is part of the organisation that I support. And that’s our independent software vendors. These are organisations that have said, Hey, we want to go to market with Google Cloud, so much so that we’re going to invest in their technology, we’re going to run applications in Google Cloud. And we’re going to list our product in the Google Cloud Marketplace. And now on the other side of that Google Cloud has also made this neutral investment by way of adding resources and tools and things that these companies can leverage people really to support that motion, and a cosell team. And so we’re invested in saying, hey, look, ISV thinks we’re going to market with us. And here’s how we’re going to jointly do that. Let’s take a look at the customer with that customer needs, and what solution we can provide to them. It when it comes to things like ISV and CO selling, we’re talking a lot about solution and completeness or out of box solutions that you may have, again, that are running on Google Cloud. On the other side of that, as I said, you know, my team also covers services partners. And that can be our systems integrators that have these fabulous solutions or services that are driving Google Cloud, maybe we have customers that are looking to adopt our technologies and set up a landing zone, they haven’t really started with Google Cloud, or they’ve identified a larger workload I did, it’s in a migration. And they want to provide those services too. So along those ways, it’s working together with these organisations and figuring out how we can provide that end solution or end service to the customer. By co selling together. That’s a you know, again, the highlight of of what co selling is and how we interpret it here at Google Cloud and how we actually go to market with a motion like that. What it isn’t, is, you know, what we’re probably more familiar with, if you’ve grown up in technology, or any sort of organisation where maybe you’re an OEM, or even a hyper scalar, or an independent software vendor, and you typically have what’s called a reseller. And this would be an organisation that is decided to say, hey, we want to take your product or your service, and we want to resell it to an end customer, a lot of times, that’s a, you know, a mutually agreed upon commercial contract, they get a certain amount of money for each of the sales, and then they can go directly to the customer and resell your product with CO selling, it really comes to that baseline word that we love here. And that’s partnership, right, we get to both be invested in the process, and support each other through it. And really, the customer comes out on top here, which is great, because we really stopped to pause to learn and understand what a customer needs through this journey to
Vince Menzione 8:16
Yeah, I think what you had to say here is really relevant to the conversation we’ve been having about how it used to be a push right to the customer. Now the customer is dictating the route, right? They’re saying, I want to buy from Google, I want to buy, I might want to stitch together two solutions, I might want to take an SI solution and an ISV solution. And I want to I want to burn down against my agreement with Google to do so. And their help. And you’re working with them to effectively coordinate between the multiple parties, multiple partners involved? Absolutely, we are. And I think you know, we’ve talked about this in the past, but we see an organisation really evolve what they want to offer to a customer and they take a step back, and they say, Okay, I have this great partnership with Google Cloud, which is, you know, formidable. hyperscale are in the industry right now. And that’s, that’s great. But oftentimes, you need to think more about that. Because as you have these conversations with a customer, they’re going to want more than one thing. They’re looking at big picture. And that means more products, more solutions, more services. So we even say to our partners, whether it be a service partner, a sell partner, or build partner, what we call our ISVs is take a look at also our Google Cloud ecosystem, where can you make further relationships and partnerships, to then advance your opportunities in what you’re providing to a customer to? So we don’t we’re certainly at that, at the centre of that in that partnership. But we also have again, this fast partner ecosystem of 1000s of partners where everyone can start to work together to piece together what a customer is really looking for.
Chelsea Berlucchi 9:53
Yeah, I think this area is so misunderstood by many organisations right where they they miss they missed the whole point. hero’s journey in the process, how you’re getting there. And I think you’re covering that specifically and maximising your relationship working with Google, and then working within their own ecosystem to maximise the results they’re trying to solve for. I’d like to double click on you, though, on your career journey, right? Because, you know, this is you’ve had an amazing career journey, Google, an amazing career journey in general. And I was hoping maybe you can spend a moment with our listeners and viewers here on how you got to this spot in your career. Chelsea? Yeah, of course. So a little history on Chelsea. I. So I’ve been at Google now for six years, but I’ll back it up. So prior to Google, I was at Cisco for 10 years. And that’s where I started my career. I started right out of college, I actually got my offer letter in my email on my drive home from Thanksgiving break for Thanksgiving break senior year in college, which is pretty exciting. So it makes for a really great rest of the senior year, of course, to be able to sign on the dotted line and know that, you know, you’re pretty much taken care of once you graduate at that point. But so I started just a couple of months again, after I graduated from college at Cisco, in what was called their Cisco sales associates programme. And you’ve probably heard of it a lot of other organisations have these programmes where they take in new grads from college or maybe graduate school. And they teach them the ins and outs of the organisation that technology soft skills that they need to be launched into the field as a seller. So I did that in North Carolina for nine months. And then I moved straight out to Boston, I packed my car with most of my belongings, some still, I probably left at my parents house at that point, and got a place in Boston and town that I actually never been to and took an outside sales role with Cisco, in that, I would say provided so much of foundation of one my career for for my entire journey, but also this role that I’m in today, I really gained my sales chops, I would say bear and a lot of bumps and bruises. But also, because I’m a very competitive person, it was something that I was excited to do. So I was at Cisco for 10 years. And you really learn when not only to you know how to truly qualify a customer how to work with customers. But Cisco does, you know, you can check me on this 95 plus percent of their business through a value added reseller to partners. And so they also have this really strong partner ecosystem that is really seen as a gold standard in a lot of industries. And one of the first lessons you also learn at Cisco is how do you actually partner, and those that do it successfully are going to learn how to scale their business the right way, but also, again, at the root of all of this is meet with their customer needs. So I built that, as I said, that foundation for 10 years, and it was going to meetings with partners, it’s leaving a meeting, calling a partner, and updating them on the status of the meeting. It’s putting together strategy with partners, and they become some of your best friends. One of them. I’m excited to see at Google Cloud Next soon, he and I have started our careers really together and kind of grown up in the business. So it’s been interesting to see a lot of the things that he’s done. He’s still at a partner, which you know, I value a lot. And I remember one one time, we’re going out to meetings in Vermont, we are carpooling together, and we planned how he was going to propose to his wife. So you really get closer to your partners if you’re doing it the right way. Yeah, they have, you know, beautiful family now. And it’s been incredibly successful. But it that built that foundation. And then after 10 years at Gu at Cisco Sorry, I was really thinking, this is the point in which I need to look at, hey, do I want to stay at Cisco? Or do I want to explore other opportunities, and at that point, it was everything you heard about was cloud cloud, cloud cloud. And I thought, Okay, I have this backdrop of really, technology sales, and even what’s in the data centre. But let’s see what this evolutionist is about, right. And so I got a role at Google. That was also indirect sales. I wanted to go into people leadership, but I’m also a firm believer of working for someone that has done your job before is a lot better of experience than someone that hasn’t. And whether that means you’re a manager and you have maybe an open wreck on your team and you are backfilling yourself. So you learn what it’s like to sit in your team shoes, or, you know, if you’re actually going for a position you’ve, you’ve at least done it for a little while. So I learned the Google way of selling what the technology was like what the customers were really worried about how to make them comfortable and confident with what we had. But then also my first week on the job was meeting what we then called our partner sales managers, which is A team that I lead now. And the PSM at the time, was incredibly helpful. He had the same kind of background that I did were knows how to partner and why partners are there to scale your business, but also make you and the customer successful. So it was great to build out a different strategy. As I progressed at, at Google, I really got in deeper with our ISP organisation. And I started to do a lot more business with our ISPs, this was actually a new function. For me to learn. We didn’t we didn’t do this at Cisco. So knowing that another organisation was running on top of Google Cloud, and by the way it could sell it and we incentivize our sellers to do so was pretty cool. So I got close with several of our partners, and I got to learn a lot more about my customers business, because I wasn’t just talking to them about what Google Cloud could provide. I was asking them broader questions. And instead of thinking, Oh, I can’t do that at Google. I was I was starting to think, let me see who of our partners can can do is to provide it. So it got me in a lot more conversations. And it made me understand that this really made you one of these invaluable assets to your customer to so I became more passionate about it. And luckily for me, they decided to invest in the IOC organisation that grew it. And I received the role that I got in April 2022, leading the cosell team fries team. So that’s really that’s my journey of, you know, being both at at Cisco and Google. I’m what I would think as an elder millennial, so I should probably have more hops in my career at this point. But I don’t because I’ve really been happy with the organization’s I’ve been with, and I hope I get to stay at Google longer to
Vince Menzione 16:51
see, if you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I build growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change, and part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders ISV, sellers, S size MSPs, and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is, it’s noisy, I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There is a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard, we’re getting ready to open the doors early in a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder, and innovator or leader, visit our website. As well, what I hear loud and clear is you’ve gone deep, right? You worked in an organisation it was very partner centric, a little bit more channel centric, that’s called the old school way of doing things. And then co selling Google like you were doing your field salary. So you got you got street cred, in my opinion. And then you’ve now you’ve integrated into this partner organisation, which by the way, we’ve had Jim Anderson, as you know, we’ve had his leadership team talking about precision partnering, where exactly does your function sit in that partner organisation? And what does it look like today?
Chelsea Berlucchi 18:32
That’s a great question. So this is something that, you know, moving the mystery around, how do I work with Google? Where do people sit is something that we get asked a lot to? It’s a one, it’s a great question, and, and people need to understand what that looks like. We actually had a pretty cool event at the beginning of the year called partner kickstart, where we invited our partners to several different locations around North America. And they got to sit with our sales teams, and then learn about the initiatives for this fiscal year, which was, which was great to get everyone on the same page, but also just build momentum for the year and get started on the right foot. And through the sessions each of us shared with this partner ecosystem looks like and so typically, when I have this question, I share a slide. So if people see me you can always ask me for it, but I’ll try to paint a picture here for you. Imagine please do Yeah. So imagine two pieces of the organisation that Jim Ron’s which is the North America partner ecosystem. On one side, we have this partner segment focused and you’ve had plenty of these leaders on we have our cell and service portion which is led by Shelby Johnston. We have our solution Si, which is led by Rebecca Potts, our GSI team that’s led by Gina Frederick Angelina who’s new you should have on and then of course, our ISV team, which is led by Scott Barson. Now within each of their teams they have we’ve you know that term we’ve said before as the partner development managers are eyes The specialists. And these are folks that are specifically chartered with covering in one to few partners to make sure that they’re building out a go to market strategy that can be launched at the north north american level. And they’re really looking to execute alongside these partners too, which is great. So intense precision partnering, as you said, with these particular partners to make sure we’re being very intentional in our go to market motions. Now, that’s one side that’s partner segment. On the other side, we have our customer segment focus, and this is where I sit. So this is where we have the enterprise cosell team, which is my team. We have our strategic accounts and industries cosell team, which is led by James Hardy, who is new to Jim’s team to James and I really work closely because our teams do the same thing, just covering different sets of accounts. And so we get to collaborate and share a lot of notes, which is great. Now, we have another new portion to the customer segment focus, and that is mid market enterprise. This is led by Lainey marks, who is you know, just absolutely tough. She is competitive. And she’s going after this business of mid market enterprise. And this is new, because we have taken a set of customers that sit what we call this mid market enterprise. And we have decided we want to be completely partner facing with them, which is great. So she has a team of sellers that are their go to market is always with and through a partner, which is great. And then finally
Vince Menzione 21:31
makes a lot of sense, by the way, because the mid market has been underserved in general from a partner perspective, right? Yes,
Chelsea Berlucchi 21:37
yeah, agreed. And it and there’s so much opportunity there, I think. And we see a lot of these, these customers too, that have either it’s a niche product, or the solution they’re offering, or the way they’re built, the organisation should be reliant on working with a partner or building out their own ecosystem, too. So I’m glad that she’s chartered that this year, she’s doing a phenomenal job. The last piece of our customer focused teams is the candidate ecosystem, which is led by Meghan Tanner, whom again, is there another force that you should have on the call to so all of these folks are working together, either we’re out there with the customers and the sellers making sure we know how to co sell, we are working directly with customers, we’re building up these partners and what the business they’re doing with Google Cloud, but also the business that they’re representing out there in the field. And our underlying teams here, of course, partner engineering. And then we also have a Gen AI Centre of Excellence where we are keenly focused on driving innovation through generative AI and cloud AI.
Vince Menzione 22:38
Okay, so that’s a pretty massive organisation. It’s a long as a lot of ground to cover. I’m a partner, I’m trying to figure out, like, where do I start? Like, who do I work with? Can you help us there?
Chelsea Berlucchi 22:48
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s it? That’s a great question, I will make this very simple. If you are a partner in meaning you have gone to our partner advantage portal, you’ve registered, you’ve gotten the right certifications, pass the test, urine, you know, you should always still be working first with your account team. And that sounds a little weird, but I will say is that this could be your initial go to, and really, that Launchpad into further into the partner ecosystem, you would have an accounting that has this investment, initial interest in how successful you are in the Google Cloud ecosystem. And they can also talk to their peers to make sure you’re getting the right love to start with. Beyond that, as we see partners really develop what they have and their relationship with Google Cloud, we do ask that they then digging deeper to this partner advantage portal, which is going to provide them with a lot of training and access to information on how to build out a good market, but also gives them a platform to then log opportunity share that information. So we can see, oh, this is a very relevant partner that making an impact. Let’s support them more in that sense, too. So I would say start with those two. But then, as you as you progress within the Google Cloud ecosystem, we have folks like partner advisors that help you and partner and development managers or ISP specialists. And then of course, you know, that large team that I shared with you as well, that it’s standing there with with North America. And by the way, that’s just one part of our ecosystem. We have a global team too.
Vince Menzione 24:20
So I know you present to partners quite a bit on these topics and how to help them be more successful. And I got a peek at some of your presentation materials before we have this conversation. Can you talk about this? And I believe very much in how you show up. Right? How do you stand out? How do you differentiate yourself as a partner, right, because now I’m a partner and there’s all these other partners that are trying to you know, they’re tugging on the teams to cosell together. And I like to talk about being a shiny quarter and a bucket full of shiny terms I use, like, how do you show up differently uniquely? How do I build an effective co selling strategy that will resonate with your sellers? and your customers, Chelsea?
Chelsea Berlucchi 25:01
Yeah. So another great question that we do get frequently, we see people that come into the ecosystem they want to launch, they want to launch the right way. And so I do think it’s good to level set, right? It’s good to understand what you’re offering, how do we position it with the field so that you do get the right amount of scale resources, as well as intention that you may need to be successful with us too. So I think you hit on one key point that I’m just going to underscore right now is around a differentiated value proposition. And so in some cases, if we’re talking about an ISV, or an independent software vendor, offering up that technical, technically differentiated solution is a, you know, key importance. And I think any company out there that has built a product, they probably did it because they saw a gap in the market, or a new market that they wanted to build out. So that can be a little bit easier for these partners. One thing we also like to say is take that solution and how you’re differentiated, but then tie it back to Google Cloud, too. So how does it actually work well, with Google Cloud first party, and that will one help our sellers understand, Oh, these two work together, this is why they make sense. This is why it makes sense to our customers, and really helps them resonate with that actual solution. Now, on the other side of that, if your services or sell partner, maybe a little little more difficult, so you do want to then have a bit of a story. And I would actually tell everyone this and in that if you have that 30 minutes with the seller, we’re really pushing our customers to say yes, you may have your five minute pitch, which is great, I love a five minute pitch, you’ve boiled down to a shark tank type of thing. And we know really what we’re gonna get out of that conversation. But what I’m shifting folks to do this year is to share a win story, because I do think those can win a win story, tell me how you worked with a customer to win an opportunity and win over that customer to hopefully be a referenceable customer for you, because that’s really gold standard, right? Not only do they enjoy the process of working with you, they enjoyed it so much that they’re willing to be a reference for other customers, and even maybe talk to your sales team or other sellers to to understand why. And so I’m pushing goats to do that five minute pitch, but also a five minute win story of how and why a customer would adopt your solution, your service, your technology, I do think that those things will go a long way. And we do internal win stories, or we call win wires as well really sharing, hey, we’ve just started to work with this customer. They decided to move forward with Google Cloud and this technology or this partner. And here’s really what that cosell process looked like. So I would say get you know, get organised with those kind of the the basics and the foundation there. But beyond that, there’s always loads of content that people want to share with us. It’s, you know, could be an extensive pitch deck. It could be a list of qualifying questions, it could be architectures to review. It could be a Rolodex of people at the organisation to cosell with ourselves and all that’s fine. But I also do say, Hey, what is what is it good kind of walk away to pager. So you’re gonna have your, your, you know, five minute pitch, you may have your wind story, and then give us that battle card of information to get us to launch within the field teams. I think all those things, you know, we’ll get started. And then of course, you evolve from there. But you know, it can look look different for everyone as well. I just got a note from a manager yesterday morning saying hey, I just want to give props to an ISV that showed up so well with my team. And what his eyes we did was they they reached out to the manager, they asked for an account list, they went back and did their homework, they did account mapping, they said here’s where we are, here’s where we’re working with these customers, here’s maybe where we need help. And then they recorded themselves giving a 10 minute or less overview of how they were going to address this particular managers team. And really a little bit about their solution to in that sort of preparation and for thought that took probably you know 30 minutes to an hour on the partner side. Set them up for success with this manager and then their team and so that one interaction would lead to really a door opening at a probably 100 customers which is pretty cool. So I think Little things like that go a long way.
Vince Menzione 29:33
I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago. Athletic Greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all Have my nutritional basis supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase, go to drink 80 one.com forward slash Vinson that’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson, check them out. I think what you said to like getting, you know, you called about the five the elevator pitch the brand story, and then the customer account story, right? Like, what what did you do differently better in that account, I think, taking a seller through that process, so they could personalise it and say, Okay, this is how this partner can work with me more effectively. And then getting to the what’s in it for me, resonating with like, this is how you can win, we can win together by again, exposing the account list saying, Hey, these are the accounts will rehab relevance. This is the whitespace opportunities we can go after together and coming to the table prepared like that. Just it’s so important. I think doing that is the best way to differentiate yourself in the market, would you say? I
Chelsea Berlucchi 31:13
absolutely think Sony can get it goes back to basics, which I think people forget about a lot. And I will say from my jump from Cisco to Google, I had to go back to basics, right? It was coming from a company that was number one in a lot of markets to a company that was not. And you as I said, you get I got more bumps and bruises along the way, but really taught me to go back and say, you’ve got to prove yourself. And that means you start at layer one there. And really going back to basics will help. And I think doing that little bit of work again, goes a long way for sure.
Vince Menzione 31:50
So let’s talk about marketplaces. I mean, we could probably spend the entire conversation here on marketplaces. It’s I’ve been calling this the marketplace moment. I mean, it’s it’s astounding to see the uptake just in a very short period of time over the last couple of years now. The durable cloud budgets, right customers are making buying decisions at the executive level with Google. They’re making large commitments. And this opportunity to show up differently and transact differently. We talked about millennial generation, Gen Z, also not wanting, like doing things digitally, our lives have changed since COVID. Right? How do in marketplaces are being a bigger thing that GCP? Right, I think that this is becoming a better vehicle, a way to bring multiple partners together? How do I initiate a conversation about GCP marketplace with a customer? Yeah,
Chelsea Berlucchi 32:42
so I think this is another one that that we do get frequently, right. So we have ISVs, that, again, have built products that run on Google Cloud. And they’re available to purchase in our Google Cloud Marketplace, which is in our billing console. It’s in our Google Cloud Console, which is really where our customers go to build out projects with Google Cloud products. But it’s very easy for them to then click over to the marketplace and say, hey, look, I need solution completeness, or I want something that’s out of the box. And I’ve got a tonne of solutions to pull from there. And we do have an extensive marketplace. It’s been building and growing. And you did have Scott Arneson on last year, who’s who’s my boss. And he’s now you know, over his year at Google send an incredible job with really applying a lot of rigour in organisation to how we go to market, how we show up with our partners, but also with our customers. And in that he has an individual that’s also on his team named Pete Henderson, who is if you’re talking about marketplace, you got to get him on P is our marketplace go to market lead. So what Pete does is really straddles that line between go into market where he’s meeting with customers on a daily basis around the marketplace. And sometimes these are very strategic, sometimes they’re difficult conversations. And he takes back any feedback around features and functionality and make sure it gets to our marketplace global team to say, hey, can we start to make enhancements here. And, you know, I love working with Pete. He’s really one of my partners in crime here. And one thing we talk about often is this conversation of how to initiate the talk with with your customer around Google Cloud Marketplace, or marketplace in general. And we really tried to break it out in a couple of different ways. You’re going to have a first time user of the marketplace. And in that case, I always coach our sellers to say, if you’re having one a first time call or reset call with your customer, or just a general weekly update, you know, open up the Google Cloud Console, give them a quick tour and bring them over to the marketplace and share the show with them. Hey, where it is why our teams, our customers use it right and why it’s beneficial to them, and have them ask them questions, but then bring in bring in the Google Cloud team or your are, you know the Google app marketplace team to again help you have those conversations as well. Also the cosell team there. But that’s one is getting getting a feel for where they are. Had they used a marketplace in the past. If it wasn’t Google Cloud, great, that tells me they’re open to the process that tells him that procurement understands how to work with they understand it, yes, they understand it. So I don’t mind that I actually, I really like it because then we’re not really trying to convince them to use the marketplace, we’re just, you know, really giving the information on hey, we have a marketplace, here’s why you should be using it. If you’re also working with Google Cloud. Or even if you’re not, if you have partners that are listed in the marketplace, here’s why it’s also valuable to you and to them. And then that’s one place, it’s a very simple, straightforward conversation on the other side of that, if you have a customer that has used the marketplace before, but maybe they haven’t done what’s called a private offer, where they’re negotiating directly with an ISV. And that offer then comes through the marketplace for them to click to accept. And it’s maybe a more bespoke offer really tailored to their needs. They’ve done something maybe more like a click to subscribe, which is also totally okay. Or maybe they’ve done a trial they tested around, but nothing really substantial yet, with Google Cloud Marketplace, and you want to get them more comfortable and confident. This is maybe a little more of a sit down. It’s one, hey, we’ve noticed you’ve been using the Google Cloud Marketplace. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you’ve been testing? How’s that going? Do you know? How do you like the billing integration? And what else could you be using it for? And then the larger conversation is maybe with procurement to to help them understand, hey, look, here’s why it’s valuable to our procurement teams. Here’s why it’s helpful for you on the financial side of things, if you have a Google Cloud commit to in show remove, as we said, that mystery of the what and the why of the marketplace to get them comfortable. And then I always say handhold handhold through that first purchase. So if you’re a partner, having this conversation around that Google Cloud Marketplace, bring the cosell team in, bring that your sales counterpart at Google Cloud, to have the conversation to and be there and be ready when the customer does make that first purchase, we want to make sure it goes smoothly, and that they come back and then they reroute all purchases through the marketplace. So that’s what I mean by hand holding them and making sure they have a really, really good experience the first first time or second time or third time or 20th time.
Vince Menzione 37:33
Do you ever have partners asked for propensity data? So do they ever come to you and say, who are customers who are either underspend on their cloud commitments, or might have a higher propensity to buy through marketplace?
Chelsea Berlucchi 37:46
You know, we do pretty confidential. Obviously, we can’t, we can’t share out, you know, hey, look, here’s a list of our committed customers, these are customers that have really trusted us and put together a financial agreement. But what we like to do is it’s really give them the tools and resources to say, hey, look, you know, we do have some, some mutual conversations going on, or customers that are, you know, we’re also working on projects together, can you tell us how you may be working with them to so this, this goes back to that CO selling one on one of the give and take, right? If you’re gonna come and say, Hey, can you tell us where all of your businesses we’re gonna, you know, probably not do that. But we’d like to understand, hey, look, what kind of conversations are you also having, and I love that I love when two sellers get together, right, and they start talking about a mutual customer. And that way, they can really, one, become more confident working with each other. And as you probably know, if you’ve been in sales in the past, when you have someone that’s also in the trenches, maybe another company, then you build trust. And then you also really, the conversation evolved so much better to so we definitely, you know, have a give and take and make sure that we’re both doing neutral sharing, but again, of course, within within the realm of what we’re allowed to do there. Yeah,
Vince Menzione 39:05
no, I understood. So let’s take us through. So we built our brand story. We’ve talked about when wires or successes that we’ve had together, help help illustrate the solution. We’ve gotten some success together working with the teams, we might have introduced marketplaces, we’ve gotten that flywheel going, now that we’ve gotten our flywheel going for a period of time, what else can we do to drive more effective co selling as a more mature partner now working with you and your organisation? Yeah, so
Chelsea Berlucchi 39:34
I love this question. When I get this from partners, because it really tells me they’re looking to continue to invest and grow their relationship with Google Cloud, right? And they’re looking for coaching. They’re looking for feedback, whatever it may be. So we always get to one go to an idea board to and say, Hey, let’s figure out where you are and where do you want to be get to be a little creative, but I give folks a bit of a roadmap In where I see, you know, hey, here’s some of our really what we may call gold standard, or these partners that are have been really successful. And we also look at those that maybe are just starting out. And so what we first see is okay, the customers or partners decided to invest in Google Cloud, they’re building out a go to market with us and become a partner. Ideally, we’d like that partner to then assign someone the Google Cloud relationship, meaning do you as a partner have someone that owns who will cloud in terms of alliances in terms of a channel there, and that means they’re, they’re dedicated enough, they’re invested enough to know it’s a core part of their business to even hire someone or a team of someone’s to manage that relationship? And so we say that’s, that’s first checkmark, okay, Alliance is great, because we also have that too. The second one is okay, we see alliances and may start to immediately engage with maybe their counterpart at Google Cloud or sales directly. And I think those engagements are good, but they can only go so far, as you know, we just talked about this, where we really see things start to develop and grow, is when an organisation can get their sales team to talk to our sales team as well. And that means maybe they didn’t aligned on incentives, they’ve really said, Hey, sellers, at our partner, this is how you know, we’re going to pay you if you’re, you know, you work and you sell Google Cloud or with our through the the marketplace, right, or whatever else it may be, but if they have some sort of interest in working with Google Cloud sellers, and we get both of those grip groups working together, that creates a lot of this, this good gossip, a lot of champions internally, and we see more scale there, those two can be pretty easy to check off. And the third one we really anchor on is, again, another point we’ve talked about is expanding a partnership within Google clouds partner ecosystem. So say, if you’re an ISV, I find that a lot of them have said, Okay, we’re just going to work with the hyper scalar, right, and we’re going to launch in the marketplace. And that’s it. But they haven’t really adopted a resale strategy. They haven’t adopted a services strategy. And so at some point along the sales cycle, they may be a little stuck, maybe that’s in the prospecting stage, maybe it’s in the final stage of implementation, but there’s maybe a backlog or an area where they could really adopt business faster. And that means, hey, look, you’re already part of this ecosystem, why not lean in further, and find more partners that can really help you along the way? Again, maybe it’s implementing services, or reselling. And this can go into different ways, right? You’re a sell partner of ours, and your customer keeps asking for a particular solution that you don’t have in your book of business. Maybe Google Cloud does, or our marketplace does, go strike up these relationships with those partners too. And then you know, that third one is really services partners, which can say, hey, they may want to offer a solution completeness, or they know I’m going to implement x, and then my customer is automatically going to go search for y product, and to really add on or see, Hey, how is this other product actually running or working. And so you can really think about your business like that from the customer’s perspective is always really helpful, and then build out what that cosell strategy looks like. So I say, these are three buckets that are pretty distinct, and get a little more strategic as you go along. And then underlying that is really just this innovation, right? We talked about Jim AI, but that can be inclusive of other products. And that is taking that customer feedback to say, what are they really challenging you to do to maybe add to your product? Or what is the market really saying in terms of, hey, we like what you have to offer. But this is where things are headed. And using Google Cloud in the force of our engineering to really help you evolve your products and maybe even revolutionise them at some point to can can help you further along in that cosell process. Yeah,
Vince Menzione 44:06
I love it. I love it. And Google Next is next week, like, I’m excited to be coming out to Vegas. Although I’m not always excited to come to Vegas. I am excited to come to Google next next week. I know you’ll be there. What’s in store for those listening and viewing today? Like what can they expect? And where should they go? What are the best sessions that they should attend?
Chelsea Berlucchi 44:26
Yeah, that’s another good one. So I think I’m excited to you know, likewise, not so excited about Vegas. But I think well, you’re I’m excited about is Google Cloud Next. And it feels like we just had it because you did. But that’s part of why I’m excited because we get to take all the momentum that we had last year and we get to have it at the beginning of the year this year. And now even though the time in which we just had it out in San Francisco is much shorter. Now. There have been so many advancements and announcements, certainly around cloud AI in general. of AI that I think people are going to be excited to hear and see more about. So you know, obviously tune in to that keynote, get your seat there to make sure you hear what is the latest and greatest. Also, this is a partner podcast. So we have a specific area Partner Summit area for our partners to come and join us. My favourite thing from last year was the expo hall. So we have our partners that have set up booths. And we’ve these are sponsoring partners, they have assigned seating all around to really demo their products where you can meet with these partners, you can understand their value pitch, and you can really see what’s going on. They have a lot of swag, of course. So if you’ve got, you know, friends or kids at home, and you want to bring them a little souvenir, you can load up on the water bottles and stickers and all the things you really want. Like yeah, yes, yeah. Bring an extra suitcase just for that if you can. No, but yeah,
Vince Menzione 45:58
so and also the parties. I know, I heard there’s like 100 partner parties, they’re going to be going
Chelsea Berlucchi 46:03
on there too many, I think, yeah, we’ll have to hire a driver for the night to just carry around from from one part party to another. But yeah, so all of that is going on? I think certainly the partner keynote will be interesting. We do partner awards, but we really get to hear from our leaders at Google Cloud that share one the important importance of partnership, and what are we driving together? And of course, you know, that is something that will bring us through the remainder of the year, that sort of momentum and direction is something that we can all really anchor on and build our businesses
Vince Menzione 46:37
around. Yeah. So Google Next April 9 10th. And 11th. Yeah, next week, excited to have and to see you in person again, IRL. Likewise, I have one more. Yeah, I have one more question. And it’s a favourite question. I asked all my guests this question. You are hosting a dinner party. And you can invite any three guests from the present? Or the past this amazing dinner party? You could we could even talk about where you’re going to host that dinner party? Whom would you invite Chelsea? And why?
Chelsea Berlucchi 47:08
Yes. So I have listened to your podcast in the past, I knew this one was coming to. And so I thought about it a bit. You know, I think what I would like to do so in 2020, tough year for all of us. But unfortunately, I lost both of my grandfather’s within months of each other. So it was tough, obviously, it you know, was a huge, huge gap in our families and, and tough on my parents, of course, and so I would certainly have them there, just to have that, that last meal, because in 2020, you really couldn’t go and visit people right or locked down. And so I think I’m just learning so much, even, you know, after they both passed away about them, and also really the marriages that they had with my grandmother’s too, who are both are bound, thankfully. And so I’m gonna break your rules a little bit. I’m going to give up my seat. And I’m gonna give both of those last two seats to my grandmother so they can have maybe a double date a romantic dinner. I don’t think they’ll be lurking around. But I do think that they would appreciate
Vince Menzione 48:11
you joining. You could be she could be the chaperone as well. Okay, I
Chelsea Berlucchi 48:16
can I can bring them their meals. I’d probably like that. To them. Yeah, no. So I think I would do that. Yeah, I think you know, it’s funny, I remember seeing you in, in New York. And after we had that big date the forum, we ran into each other, I ran into you and your wife, and you guys were getting to just get out around town and going to see your favourite French bakery and enjoy a bluebird, New York City day. And so I do think, of course, that marriage and partnerships are great, and they both had some some really strong ones. So I’m sure they’d appreciate that one last nail together.
Vince Menzione 48:47
Thank you. Thank you. You’ve been an amazing guest. Chelsea, I so enjoyed spending time with you today. I’m so excited to see you next week. And if you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, try to get out to Vegas for this event, or I know it’s gonna also be live streamed as well. So listen, watch. Google Cloud is on a tear, exciting time for our partner community. Chelsea, my favourite subject, co selling, having you on board leading this very important function. Excited to see what’s next for you. And for Google Cloud. Thank
Chelsea Berlucchi 49:20
you so much, Vince. It’s been great to be here. And I look forward to seeing you next week. And to all the listeners as well. Hopefully I get to see you at Google Cloud Next.
Vince Menzione 49:28
All right. Well, looking forward to seeing all of you at Google Cloud Next. Thank you so much for watching, and listening to The Ultimate Guide to bartering. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner online and Ultimate Guide to partnering.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe add to our new YouTube channel ultimate partner we’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partner