95 – Be Known, for One Thing, Embrace Digital Marketing and Change the Paradigm.

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I was delighted to welcome a friend and fellow channel leader for the 95th episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Marc Monday is Citrix Global Partner Go to Market Program Leader. In this episode, Marc and I catch up on a discussion we have both been having about the current state of the channel and partner business and issues that continue to plague channel chiefs. In this episode, Marc sees three areas where channel leaders can have the most impact; be known, for one thing, embrace digital marketing and change the conversation.

Marc Monday is currently Managing Director at Citrix, leading the Global Partner Go-To-Market & Ecosystem Strategy.  Marc is a recognized channel innovator and has been named to the CRN Channel Chiefs Annual 5 consecutive years.  An active member of the ChannelFocus Community and former advisory board member of CompTIA, in 2017 Channelnomics awarded Marc and his team at SAP with the Cloud Program of the Year Award. 

In this buoyant and provocative conversation, Marc and I discuss Citrix and their value to partners, the state of the channel, what we have both seen since the transformation, lessons he’s learned, and advice for Channel Chiefs and all of our listeners on optimizing for success this year.

I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed my time with Marc Monday!

More Episodes on 2021 Channel Trends from Industry Thought Leaders:

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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

Vince Menzione  0:30 

Marc welcome to the podcast

Marc Monday  1:12 

man i am so stoked to be here i have been a fan for ever we’ve been friends for a long time and i’m just super privileged to be here and humbled

Vince Menzione  1:21 

well i am so excited to welcome you as a guest ultimate guide to Partnering you said you and i have had the chance to work together we’ve been friends for some time we work together Microsoft and i’ve continued our friendship i mean you’ve gone on to amazing roles channel leadership roles and some really terrific organizations and now you lead Citrix global partner go to Marcet programs so i’m so excited to have you here first as a friend but also as another channel leader as a guest today so welcome

Marc Monday  1:50 

yeah i’m just gonna have to be careful because i’m a little bit of a fanboy and i don’t want to fanboy out too much so i just enjoy this podcast so much and the folks that you’ve had on it been so amazing again i’m humbled to be here and i’m really excited to have this conversation with you today and learn to do the process

Vince Menzione  2:08 

well excited to have you as well we share a common set of experiences and passions it’s just great to have a friend here to have a conversation about what we’ve all been experiencing what we’ve all been doing around this world of partnering and just life in general great to have you

Marc Monday  2:26 

thank you man i appreciate it

Vince Menzione  2:27 

so you and I have both been around the channel for some time and we just mentioned this and you know we’ll deep dive into this whole concept of partner and channel and a little bit but for our listeners that might not know Citrix can you share with them a little bit more about the organization and also the essence of your role for sure

Marc Monday  2:46 

for sure, Citrix is a fantastic company for 30 years we’ve basically helped people work remotely millions of customers around the globe around the planet and it’s really about secure remote access and then able to access your content from anywhere which sounds familiar right it’s where we’ve been for the last year and so this year has been so amazing because we’ve been in this business for 30 years in terms of secure remote working and this was the year of remote working so it couldn’t have been a better time the other thing that i love about Citrix is it’s really focused on making sure that organizations enable their people to do their best work and that’s one of the things you’ll hear us talk about or hear me talk about today is it really is about the people that technology is there to free people to do the things that they need to do and not have to worry about the connectivity the security the technology itself but really focus on the work and their work experience and their workflows

Vince Menzione  3:47 

so you hit on some you know start thinking about this now right it’s 30 years that Citrix has been doing this but in the last year what we’ve all seen right and this has been time like none of us ever expected to see on so many dimensions what do you been seeing on the business now that you didn’t expect in terms of potentially acceleration or other areas of use cases

Marc Monday  4:07 

well i’m it’s been it’s been really cool to watch as you said i’ve been around a while and i’ve seen technology waves change and shift over you know the last 2 or 30 years but what i would say now with the pandemic is proven for everyone and i think it’s true for the way that we manage our business as well is the future of work that work today is incredibly personal and especially when you’re home you know your your lifeline is your laptop being able to work effectively in the time and place and setting that works for you without having to worry and being able to do it you know in a manner in which it’s beneficial for you as a human being because you’re juggling your kids and your home life and you’re trying to do all this you know within your house i think that’s what’s really important and so you know we have this phrase ology that you know the future of work because personal and and we really want to make sure that we enable people that where they can grow they can breathe in work isn’t about a place anymore now we all want to go back to the office i can’t wait for the day that i can go into a conference room i don’t think i would have ever said that before and i can’t wait for the day that i could go back and stand at a whiteboard and try to solve a complex problem i look forward to that but the reality is we learned this year that work is not a place work is about being flexible and it’s about making sure that you have secure access and increasingly it’s about making sure that you enable your your employees to have a healthy work life balance and i know we’ve talked about that for many years but employee wellbeing and digital wellness those are things that we’ve never really talked about to the degree that we’re talking about them today

Vince Menzione  5:46 

you know this is so true ring so true because in all the interviews I’ve been doing right we’ve been having this conversation well first of all we’ve all been on our screens we’re getting fatigued right now right and organizations are really having to deal with this and a lot of my guests who come to the podcast talk about mindfulness they talk about personal space they talk about disengaging from the screen things that they’re doing you know strategies that they have what are some of the things that you’re doing or one of the some of the things that you recommend to our listeners their

Marc Monday  6:15 

boundaries i am a big believer in boundaries and it’s hard right because when your work is in your home and it’s your lifeline to everything that you do i think we all have felt compelled to work more hours it used to be i was traveling 70 80% of the time and somehow i was able to be as effective as i am now but all of a sudden my calendar has 5060 hours of meetings every week and i think the key is just as a human to be effective is to create some boundaries these are my work hours these are my fitness hours these are my family hours and of course we have to be somewhat flexible but i think the people i see that are the most effective and maybe the least stressed are the ones that are okay with stopping at a fixed time and making sure they have dinner with their families or that they go for a walk or that they eat lunch you know i’m hearing so many horror stories of people not going outside you know all day or not going for a walk or neglecting their dog or something else at home and i don’t think that’s what any company wants i think they want their employees to be in a good mental and physical space and i think that’s the trick around setting boundaries

Vince Menzione  7:31 

yeah i would agree with you in fact you know been having this conversation around podcasts in general versus video content and you and i were having a conversation about drivetime yeah just before we got started right and audio gives you an opportunity to still stay plugged in in a way get some learning going in but then also disengaged from the screen maybe go out in nature go for a walk or bike ride exercise right and maybe you’re still getting some great content that you needed to material that you needed to digest beginning in a different way or giving your eyes are break other senses come into play in terms of the learning experience

Marc Monday  8:05 

I think so I mean think I think that’s why people love podcasts because it’s such a portable medium and I think it does give us the ability to pay attention but not feel like we have to be on camera all the time I’ve seen a couple of studies that the zoom fatigue is as some real psychology to it the physiology of our bodies isn’t set up to be making 100% eye contact for six hours straight and if you know some people are saying and it happens to me too you do six hours of video calls and you are exhausted you haven’t done anything but it’s that constant eye contact

Vince Menzione  8:45 

it is so grueling li exhausting I do hope I know I do workshops for clients and organizations and I find the four hours is about the maximum amount of time I can go without a break and it’s yeah and then I really need a break

Marc Monday  8:59 

and increasingly I’m seeing people you know just be honest like I’m gonna go off-camera for this conversation I really need to concentrate and you know I’m gonna take a lot of notes and if it’s okay I’m just gonna go off-camera for this one I really love it when people do that because I think it just shows like hey I’m gonna take care of myself but this topic is important to me and I can’t maybe do both things at the same time I don’t want to poopoo video content it’s been terrific for our experience over the last year in terms of staying connected I’ve never met anyone at Citrix that I work with in-person unless I worked with them at a different company

Vince Menzione  9:35 

that’s amazing but that’s so true today if you just started within last year in a row

Marc Monday  9:39 

yeah and so it’s such a blessing I don’t want to be the anti-video guy but at the same time there is a point where you’ve got to find the right modality to you know protect yourself and have the right level of energy

Vince Menzione  9:53 

so let’s talk a little bit more about Citrix in your role right so, Global Partner Go to Market Programs Leader. What does that role What do you do?

Marc Monday  10:01 

I’m so lucky. And I’ve been lucky to work at a lot of cool technology companies over the course of my career. Really what what we want to do is make sure that this 30 year company with millions and millions of users, it has been so incredibly successful and enables this power of remote remote work and enables the power of this personal work sets its sights on the future as well. And so part of what I do is focus on how do we bring products to Marcet through channels through ecosystem partners in scalable, effective ways around the globe. And as you know, the channel is not a single thing, these partner business model types are perpetually evolving, the business models underneath are perpetually changing. You know, we went from an on-premises perpetual license model to a cloud annuity model. We went from Channel resell, which was very sort of focused on upfront sales and rebates to annuity contracts that are really around the lifetime value of the customer or customer utilization. Always buying in a cloud model. The trick is, we just have to make sure that that’s a lot of complexity. But it needs to appear simpler for the customer, first and foremost, and then ideally, for the partners as well. And so that’s a lot of what I’ve been spending my time on.

Vince Menzione  11:14 

So you mentioned some changes, a call about the whole shift that’s happened in the channel, and we’ve had Jay McBain on the podcast a couple of times, and you and I have had these conversations.

Marc Monday  11:24 

I’m a fanboy of Jay as well. Yeah, he’s amazing. Yeah.

Vince Menzione  11:28 

But you know, this whole transformation is going on, like, what do you see now that’s different with the channel? And what is the value proposition that you now have to deliver to them?

Marc Monday  11:37 

I think this is true in every business, the pace of change is faster than it’s ever been. And I think it’s both an opportunity and a challenge for partners, customers increasingly don’t have the time willingness or inclination to stress too much about the bits and bytes, they got to go focus on their business outcomes. And I think that’s also put some strain on channel partners, where maybe you were more of a traditional reseller. But now you’ve got to go deliver a solution. Or maybe you were a traditional application publisher. But now you need to deliver that as a managed service. And so this whole notion of we used to have relatively discreet swim lanes between a disk D and a VAR and a reseller, and a DMR. And a holster and a blog. Now, it, it depends on what does the customer need, I’m going to deliver the solution that the customer needs, if that means I have to write a little applet, I’ll write a little applet, if that means I need to host it, I’ll host it. And so part of what we have to do just as a channel community is broken through those boundaries of those legacy silos of partner business model types, and simplify to what is the customer outcome that we’re trying to drive to.

Vince Menzione  12:52 

So if we’re in an elevator, and I asked you to tell me your compelling value proposition to these partners, what would you say?

Marc Monday  12:59 

I’ll start with the simplest thing, it’s all about the customer. We deliver secure, remote work, to employees, wherever they are, the way they work, how they work when they work. And that’s our value prop.

Vince Menzione  13:13 

So, you know, we both been around this partnering world for quite some time. And what makes the best partners for you like if I was to ask you, what characteristics makes the best Citrix partner? What would you say?

Marc Monday  13:26 

I think just, first of all, I love this business. I love working with partners. I love what partners can do for vendors because they see around corners, they have these superpowers of customer connectivity. And they cut through the clutter in terms of what is needed for a customer. I’ve spent my entire career in the partner realm. And it has been such a joy for me a few things that I’ve seen for partners across the time in my career where they’re successful. And this is increasingly important. In this digital age, the line between being a partner and being a marketer, between being a seller and being a technical advisor being an implementation partner, or demand generation engine. It’s all blending. And so the thing that I’ve seen where the partners who are the most impactful I think for vendors is they really know what their value prop is. And I’ve done this probably several 100 times with different partners, and it’s sometimes a painstaking exercise, but I’ll meet them and after we develop some rapport, I’ll kind of do very specific precision questioning, what’s your value prop and the response is almost invariably this. I’m a gold certified partner of vendor foo. And my response is, there are 5000 of those guys. What do you actually do? Well, I’m a gold-certified vendor, gold-certified partner of this vendor, FIU based in Toronto. Great, there are 500 of those. What do you do and it sometimes takes a while because they’re so focused on trying to appease you as a vendor but then this magical thing happens well actually most of our customers are in the mining vertical and one of the challenges of mining vertical is there’s so many different pieces of hardware and machinery keeping track of that inventory is really important so what we really do there is we make sure that there’s a proper asset tagging and tracking process and then i’m like boom that’s what you do you’re the best in the world in the mining vertical around inventory and asset tracking there’s your value prop and that can be true in a retail vertical or the best inventory management and control for small mid Marcet retail shops in the atlantic region boom you’ve nailed your value prop or i work in automotive manufacturing in detroit i really focus on tier two suppliers and the most important thing that we do is ensure that they have just in time inventory which is both just in time inventory as well as cash flow boom they nailed their value prop and too often what you find is partners want to please everyone they don’t want to miss an opportunity and they’re afraid if they go specifically into a vertical or a solution or a purchasing center that somehow they’re missing those opportunities but what i have seen is people will say oh you do inventory control for tier two automotive suppliers while i know gm is really difficult on this they really expect a lot from their suppliers i too have a problem around inventory management it’s a different industry but could you help me there

Vince Menzione  16:34 

of course you know i refer to this as what’s that one thing

Marc Monday  16:38 

yeah

Vince Menzione  16:38 

right it’s the one thing

Marc Monday  16:40 

yeah for sure that the second thing that I would say is once they know their value prop they really know it and they can articulate it not just I’m the gold-certified partner of food which is it’s important sure the second piece where I’ve seen partners really separate themselves in the last I’d say seven or eight years and really in the last three years is they embrace Digital Marketing and a lot of partners that maybe grew up as time and materials consultants they have a visceral negative reaction when I bring this up but what I will say is jay we just talked about Jay McBain, Jay has the survey where Forrester believes 68% of customer technology buying decisions is done digitally online before they end up in a vendor or partners sales cycle so almost 70% of the time if you don’t have a digital presence you’ve already been taken out of the purchasing decision

Vince Menzione  17:36 

it’s right it’s amazing right and he also talks about the five seats at the table right right are you influencing those five people that are sitting at the table helping me make the decision

Marc Monday  17:45 

but but what i’ll say is and this is one of those funny things where our partners partners are such smart people i mean people who take the risk to go build a partnering business wherever they are in the equation they’re typically incredibly smart people but there’s this thing about Marceting where it’s a little bit more magic and alchemy than there used to but don’t be afraid there are powerful tools out there there are great vendors out there landing your value prop embracing seo and sem developing digital content embracing video nobody it doesn’t have to be perfect but you have to begin to make that impact and i see lots of particular lead partners that grew up as technologists they want it perfect on day one and the Marcet right now is so forgiving in terms of testing the messaging and you know we know in Marceting a b testing is happening all the time that’s where you’ve got to make that leap of faith and one question i always ask partners is who’s leading your Marceting effort and if a small partner oftentimes i’ll hear well we don’t actually have a Marceting person or i have guy that does my website for me and i’m like well that’s problem number one and that’s where you have to go dive in yeah the third thing i would say that that really sets partners apart so they know their value prop and it’s super crystal clear and there they can they can use that to drive adjacencies second they dive in on Marceting and they get super passionate about it and they see the value and it takes time but Marceting can be incredibly powerful and then the third one which is kind of part and parcel of the first two is they change and this is what i really love about working with partners partners can change a lot faster than vendors can partners can pivot partners can pivot for a customer partners can pivot for vertical they can pivot for Marcet opportunity and when they embrace that change the partners that i see rise to the top are the ones that are agile and i think that’s just a core element of being able to deliver what the customer needs even if it’s something that you’ve never done before agility is so important right now and i want to touch on this again because you know we’re talking about this transformation right and the challenges that partners face pivoting you know it It’s okay for a Citrix or one of the big hyper scalars like AWS or Microsoft to pivot, because they’re huge organizations and they can do it more. They can have more agility, right, they can invest in an area. What have you seen from an agility perspective, in terms of the challenges that partners have faced during this last year? I think one of the big challenges that the partners have had this year, but also in prior years is the cost structure of a lot of these partnerships has changed. It used to be in a traditional resell model, the margin was made on the upfront of the deal when you’re selling a perpetual license. You resourced it appropriately with pre-sales engineers that were very super qualified and highly technical. And your cost model was sort of predicated on that. And then you would do your service delivery over a period of time in a cloud model. There’s no initial big upfront sale generally, it comes in dribs and drabs monthly. And the real profitability comes in year two or three, and the partners that pivot that cost structure, so that they understand that the cash flow shift happens, that’s probably the most difficult thing that I’ve seen partners have to deal with in this past year. I think the other thing that I’ve seen just be challenging, and it’s a little bit of a double click, and this is true for everyone. By the way, it was all about cash flow. We didn’t know you know if we go back a year ago, I think I was doing a presentation on this topic. We didn’t know how long this pandemic was going to last. We didn’t know what was going to happen with the economy. We didn’t know and everybody was hoarding cash because they just didn’t know. And what I think a lot of companies realized was our business is so predicated on this positive cash flow and having a cash reserve that now that that old conversation of Do I go to the cloud? Or don’t I go to the cloud, that Capex versus Opex disappeared? It actually disappeared this year. There’s no more conversation of Do I go to the cloud? Don’t I go to the cloud. It’s what’s my billable cost for this business outcome? And I almost never hear customers talk about the cloud anymore. They might talk about burning some Cloud Credits with one of the hyper scalars, they might talk about some of the underlying technologies, but more often than not, they’re trying to get to that monthly billable deliverable for their business outcome.

Vince Menzione  22:27 

Yeah, it’s exactly what I’ve been seeing as well. You’re seeing organizations that you didn’t expect to see moved to the subscription model as well. I think can you had a conversation with Jay on this? on this topic? IBM jettison IT services, business organizations like Cisco, and the like, all moving to these new models. And so the partners don’t all need to pivot now. And they are, it seems like they’re doing much more agile to use your word job than even I expected to see. What do you think?

Marc Monday  22:57 

I do? I mean, I think, you know, you see this, we used to talk about this democratization of it. But I think there’s this democratization of subscription that’s happening. Think about our lives, most of the services that we think about in our lives, be that music or video or content, it’s all about some subscription, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s for castable. It’s repeatable, you know, what’s happening. And increasingly, I think businesses are looking for that subscription mentality, that subscription approach. And then they can think about, okay, this is the impact on my cash flow, it just gives the ability of a business owner to really think about the business outcome, rather than having to go spend a bunch of time on maybe a bigger legacy, monolithic it build-out.

Vince Menzione  23:41 

So, you know, we’ve been talking about this whole channel, you and I have had some conversations over a period of time about what’s been happening in the channel, and, you know, in channel organizations in general, and I’d like to spend a few moments here, right, because you and I both in channel chief type roles, I came out with a manifesto, stating why I feel and I believe firmly that partnership is going to be the key ingredient to growth, and ultimately survival for organizations, right? It’s the key accelerant, I believe, especially in the world that we live in today, why do you think organizations still struggle with the value and importance of their channel models and their organizations and even their channel leaders? Why do you think that so

Marc Monday  24:21 

I used to work with Ross Brown, I think, you know, Ross Brown, Ross Brown, I wrote this amazing blog several years ago that I read, go back to at least once a quarter that talks about the Six Hats of the Channel Chief. And I think one of the biggest challenges is the nomenclature. We can talk about channels, increasingly, we’re talking about ecosystems. I think what it used to be is you’d have these silos of your product person, you’re a marketing person, you’re an ops person, you’re the partner guy or girl, you’re the salesperson, you’re the renewals person. What happens in this indirect motion, is it’s all of those. It’s all six or seven of them. those roles and where we do ourselves a disservice sometimes as channel teams is we stay in our channel silo talking about channels but if we think about what we’re really doing we are an indirect sales motion or an indirect route to market that can scale as fast or slow as you like and almost as infinitely as you like and if you’re talking to a cfo or a ceo and you say i can go open up a new market for you tomorrow with no headcount and a limited operating cost they’re going to say i’m all in if i showed up to the same guy and said we need to go build a channel for this and it’s going to do this they may get lost in that conversation so i really like to zoom back out and kind of take some of those principles that i learned from ross which is this is about an indirect sales motion it’s no different than if you set up an inside sales team an outbound dmr team smb team a mid Marcet team or even an enterprise team it’s another sales team it just happens to have a multiplier effect that is far beyond the number of employees that you may have i’ll use a good example you know we both grew up at Microsoft if you think about Microsoft frankly they’re pretty small organization relative to their market cap and their their place in the market why are they successful because something like 95% of their businesses facilitated through some channel partner that 80,000 or so employees or 100,000 employees or so i don’t know what the number is these days they punch so far above their weight they probably have five to 10 million feet on the street selling Microsoft at any given point and it’s because they scale through the ecosystem

Vince Menzione  26:46 

I’m smiling right now Marc because I so get this and it’s funny because I do a lot of work with co-selling and you know you’ll have organizations that are much much smaller than Microsoft but have very large sales teams and they expect the same on Microsoft side and I have to you know have them step back from our reset their expectations around you know there’s only a handful of account executives in this particular patch whether it be geography or Marcet vertical they have other resources that support it and those are funded you know and so on to your point they do punch way above their weight because they leverage their channel so effectively

Marc Monday  27:21 

yeah and for a small company it’s even worse too because it’s like every time you hire an FTE (full-time employee) at a small company you’re making a big commitment you’re taking on their salary you’re taking on their overhead and you may have several months before you know whether or not that was a good hire let’s say that FTE costs you $150,000 what if you took that $150,000 and you were able to spread it across potentially 50 sellers with a partner organization by you know doing an incentive or doing enablement or doing something else and you can test that sales motion across those 50 or 100 sellers that might be more valuable than just adding one new hire that’s not to say people shouldn’t have FTE’s, of course, they should but my point is sometimes oftentimes I see that scaling through that partner or series of partners gives you the ability to extend your reach but also learning new ways more than a single individual new employee might be able to

Vince Menzione  28:23 

so your advice for our channel chiefs is change the conversation with the CFO?

Marc Monday  28:27 

right totally get changed the paradigm I have this thing it’s a bit provocative that I often do is I’ll show up with a business case that doesn’t have the word channel ecosystem partner or anything like that on it CFO, CEO oh here’s an opportunity for us to go when this whatever $10 million tam and here’s what I need from you in terms of that investment less than 3% I guarantee you you’ll have a return on that investment within 18 months or whatever that is invariably they say yes then I say okay and we’re gonna scale this out through our partner ecosystem

Vince Menzione  29:01 

you hear that channel chiefs out there? make sure we we get a megaphone out here on this conversation Marc, I love it!

Marc Monday  29:08 

it is incredibly effective you know again you know if you show up in your the channel guy and you’re saying that they kind of read between the lines but you know just a single piece of paper sometimes where you just simplify it and say this is the cost this is the return this is the scale this is the reach this is the efficacy that you can achieve it’s amazing when you change the conversation to their goals as a CFO it’s you know it’s the cost management return on value overall profitability of the company and you work your way back to CEO in terms of operational efficiency and you work your way back that conversation becomes very different

Vince Menzione  29:45 

and for a Chief Marketing Officer as well your family read yes right yeah so all the value there so great have a conversation I love it Marc I want to pivot though as you might know from listening to other episodes I am fascinated by how people got to this spot in their career and you’ve had an amazing career as well so I’d like to spend a few moments on you and you know some of the things that you learned along this journey this great career journey of yours advice that you might have received or attributes that you learned from mentors and the like

Marc Monday  30:16 

yeah this is a good question i i like talking about technology i’m not sure i’m always good at talking about myself but i think there’s three things in my career that have sort of established who i am in the way i think about the world i did not start in technology i grew up in a small town in michigan and my first job from the time i was 16 to 19 or so was working in a family owned independent grocery store IGA in Parchment, Michigan and it was family owned company the parents work there the siblings work there and what i learned in that role was a couple of things that it’s so basic first of all show up in the time that i was there i probably saw 100 different employees cycled through that small grocery store and more often than not was because they couldn’t show up on time and there was something about just showing up which was important the second thing that i learned and it was interesting they gave me a lot of responsibility at such a young age but i i owned the inventory for canned goods and i learned a lot about inventory management turns and the impact on cash flow and at the time i thought i was just making sure that i kept my shelves stocked and didn’t have any inventory in the back room but what i realized was that was a life lesson for everything that we do the third thing i learned in that grocery store experience was the customer matters so if i was out stocking shelves at 7pm on a tuesday night and i had to get so many cases of products up on the shelf and a customer came up my number one priority was not stocking the shelf my number one priority is making sure the customer got whatever they needed and they felt good about that experience and that was such a foundational experience for me

Vince Menzione  31:59 

how cool is that

Marc Monday  32:01 

yeah I mean in the moment you know I feel like it was just like the hustle to you know to be able to afford a cool 1968 Camaro and be able to go to the sock hop or whatever but as I look back on it it was so foundational for me

Vince Menzione  32:14 

you know I love those life lessons and I remember the IGA stores to like yes the independent grocery stores it sounds like such a great little small town that you grew up in and sounds idyllic to me

Marc Monday  32:24 

well and then i mean the other one and i’ll just go back in the time machine a little bit and i don’t want to age myself too much but this particular town that i grew up in parchment michigan it was called the paper city and it was renowned because there were in this particular area there tons of paper mills and i was lucky enough during college to be able to get a job working in the paper mills i was in the union you know people workers 1010 Parchment Michigan and working in a big factory like that you learn a lot as well and i’m not sure if you’ve ever seen a big paper manufacturing machine but it is about the length of a football field and about five storeys high and it’s this big hot wheels spinning machine that’s constantly running and it starts with this sort of slurry of wet paper pulp or wet pulp at one end of the football field goes through all these levers and rolls and comes out on the other side is a really clean sheet of paper highly dangerous place to work but but what you what i learned in that particular lesson was if that machine went down you were impacting four or 500 people in that building and all of a sudden if one part of that machine went down everybody would had to stop working and it could take times four or five six hours to get it up and running again and that lesson comes back to me time and time again when i’m working with companies what downtime can do to your business and that was an amazing life lesson as well

Vince Menzione  33:52 

yeah it’s like don’t let people down because yeah you could really impact

Marc Monday  33:56 

yeah I mean it’s you know it’s true with everything right you know when you have downtime it pits an inventory problem if it’s a machinery problem it’s unplanned maintenance these are all things that technology can help us with particularly with smart sensors and ai and ml but increasingly those losses can be substantial and it really can impact a company and so it was again another one of those I was learning through the hustle but if I reflect on it now sort of understanding how a manufacturer works and what the impacts are really foundational for me

Vince Menzione  34:27 

so really great reflections Marc there so you know have any of that has any of that trickled into what i would call a personal philosophy that guides or propels you forward like if we had a billboard here yeah like what would you project out to the world

Marc Monday  34:41 

yeah, I think so I mean so I think that’s showing up thing I think you know if I go back to the the the ethos that I received you know kind of growing up and the things I was just talking about certainly it’s you know 90% of it is turning up having a good attitude and taking your responsibility I think that’s really important but what I would say is What I’ve realized and maybe the last 10 years of my career, and especially this past year is it’s all about people. The billboard would say something like, and I’ll borrow this phrase I, I’ve seen it attributed to different people. I always like rock when Robin Williams would say this, but everyone’s fighting a battle you can’t see. So be kind always. Now you know me, I’m a very direct guy. So you may not think of me as the kindest person. So Berne Brown that set out this way. She has this phrase that says clear is kind, me being very direct, me being very clear on what our expectations are being very clear on the agreement between you and me on a particular task. That’s the kindest thing I can do for you. If I leave you in any ambiguity, or confusion, or unclarity, I’ve done you an unkindness. So everyone’s fighting a battle you can’t see be kind always and a way to be kind is to be incredibly clear.

Vince Menzione  35:58 

I love that I love Brene Brown, and I love clear is the way to be kind. Is that the way you would phrase it?

Marc Monday  36:05 

Yeah, that’s what it’s actually a little, she has it as a little digital image that you can download that I have on my wall, I printed it out. And it just as clear as kind.

Vince Menzione  36:13 

I think it’s so true. And so valid today, especially, we need to be clear in our communications.

Marc Monday  36:18 

Yeah, I think I mean, again, you know, you see this in meetings, sometimes we’re so worried about being nice to everyone. But we let the meeting Go on, or maybe that same topic, you know, reoccurs, 5,6,7, 8 times, when in fact, if you will, could have just been clear at the outset, and maybe not as warm fuzzy, you could actually have saved people hours and hours of work or sometimes weeks of work.

Vince Menzione  36:40 

And let’s go into this, like knowing what the expectations are from both sides. Right?

Marc Monday  36:44 

Yeah, I mean, I love creativity. It’s one of my favorite things is just sort of brainstorm. But I posted something yesterday, and one of my weird hobbies from the pandemic is I started to do puzzles. And if you think about a puzzle, and I think most people, 99% of people, start with the edges, they go through and they find the edge pieces, they set the frame, and then the project becomes filling in the pieces in the middle. And there’s a lot of creativity and thinking that goes into that, as you’re imagining how these pieces go together. Do I sorted by color? Do I sorted by shape? Do I sorted by lighting, you know, depends on what the scene is in the particular puzzle. But once you set the frame, the rest becomes much easier. I saw that post and I

Vince Menzione  37:25 

am in 100%, in violent agreement with you on that as well. Setting the frame. I think about it in terms of like, let’s set the set of expectations around the partnership to it kind of transfers over there. Totally.

Marc Monday  37:36 

Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s what the partner business plan is supposed to do. And I would just say if you if your partner takes those things seriously because these vendors invest so much time and energy in their coverage model if you’ve a PAM (Partner Account Manager) or a Tele-Pam or a partner, manager, and Alliance manager, they set all the structure around the business plan because it’s important to where they’re doing their business. But too often, however, I see instances where people think of the partner business plan as an exercise an academic exercise, but that partner business plan is setting the frame. Here are our shared goals. Here’s how we’re going to work together. Here’s how we’re going to remediate issues. Here’s how we’re going to keep score. Exactly.

Vince Menzione  38:17 

And also, let’s outline when we’re not getting to green, like I use a score carding methodology, like what’s blocking us? We don’t have those conversations necessarily.

Marc Monday  38:27 

Exactly, exactly. It’s almost like just establishing rules in a game like we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t go to what maybe we would, but we wouldn’t go play soccer on a soccer pitch with no lines, we wouldn’t go to a tennis court with no net. And so part of it is like, let’s establish some just base rules of how we’re going to collaborate in this particular project. And then let’s make sure that we chunk through that.

Vince Menzione  38:47 

Yeah. And if it’s not going, well, let’s have that conversation. I mean, it’s okay to walk away from it had this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais. It’s okay. As long as we have the conversation, and we were clear to each other about why it’s not working.

Marc Monday  38:59 

Man, that guy is amazing. He is you turned me on to him. I’m such a fan. And the thing I love about it is it’s just honest, be honest, be clear, decide, and then and then move on. And it makes perfect sense. But when he puts it together, it’s just so magical. And focus.

Vince Menzione  39:17 

Yeah. So, you know, we are hopefully going to be coming out of this time like no other at some point vaccinations and, you know, life in the world will open up. And you know, when that happens, you might be hosting a dinner party or if you were going to host a dinner party at that point. And you could invite any three guests to that party from the present or the past to join this amazing dinner party. Who would you invite Marc and why?

Marc Monday  39:44 

Gosh, it’s such a great question. I could probably spend a couple of weeks contemplating that. That might be my mental exercise behind the scenes. Let me give this a go. Here are three people that I really admire a lot. I would invite Spike Lee. The movie director, I would invite Walter Isaacson, the renowned biographer of Einstein to Da Vinci, Jobs, Ben Franklin. And just because I grew up there, and it’s the seminal experience of my life, and I’ve loved watching the way he’s changed over the years, Bill Gates,

Vince Menzione  40:18 

Bill Gates, yeah. So Walter Isaacson, Spike Lee and Bill Gates, what it what a diverse group that is.

Marc Monday  40:26 

Yeah, I feel like I should probably, I should probably amend it a little bit. Grace Hopper is another person that just fascinates me in terms of one of the founders of modern computing. So if I could get another I would add Grace Hopper,

Vince Menzione  40:40 

Grace Hopper. Okay. Well, we get four at the table when they talk about what do you think the conversation would be about?

Marc Monday  40:46 

The interesting thing is you look at this list. They’re all innovators in their own way. Walter Isaacson has dug deep on real innovators, you know, Ben Franklin Vinci, Einstein, Steve Jobs, he really seems to be fascinated by people that innovate. Gates is the most renowned innovator, I guess of our time, in some ways. Spike Lee is an innovator in terms of the way he shoots movies, doesn’t change cinema, or going back all the way to do the right thing or school day. I think they would talk about change and innovation. And what’s next. And, you know, if you’ve watched that Bill Gates, three-part series on Netflix, inside, inside Bill Gates mind inside Bill Gates, whatever it is, it’s amazing to see that way they dive into those topics because they’re areas of innovation that I would have never imagined. And so for me, I would, I would really enjoy that conversation. And we’ll provide links to the Bill Gates, Netflix documentary, as well, for our listeners. All It’s so good. But yeah, and also in the notes, if you could do the Brene Brown if people don’t know, I mean, I think everybody knows Brene Brown now. But if you added her initial TED Talk, it is. It’s life-changing. And she also has a Netflix special as well,

Vince Menzione  42:04 

we’ll get links there as well. So Marc, this has been a terrific conversation. It’s exceeded my expectations. So great to have you finally, a guide to Partnering.

Marc Monday  42:12 

I’m so humbled. Thank you so much for the time. Well,

Vince Menzione  42:15 

if you have any closing comments for our listeners, and some of the partners out there on how they might optimize for success, the rest of this year?

Marc Monday  42:23 

Yeah, I think I would just, I think I would, I would say three things, put the customer at the center of everything that you do, and everything becomes simple. And that’s true for partners. And it’s increasingly true for vendors. We live in a very complex, interconnected world. And it’s very easy to get stuck in a specific gap or detail. But something magical happens when you put the customer at the center and you work the problem backward. The second piece of advice I would give is to get excited and dive in on Marketing. Marketing will be your superpower and differentiator. Marketing will be your superpower and your differentiator between you and your competition. And I guess I would say the last thing is and I probably mean this. But the last thing I would say and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, take care of yourself. I know that we all feel compelled to work really hard for our families, for our companies, for our employees. But I see a lot of people who are overworked. overtired, overstressed and you’re doing everyone a disservice by not taking care of yourself. So go take a walk, go to the gym, take a nap. Get the right level of sleep, eat properly. These basic things people are counting on you. So take care of yourself. And by taking care of yourself, you’ll take care of your people.

Vince Menzione  43:50 

Such great advice, such great advice, Marc, thank you so much for being a guest such an excellent guest on the Ultimate Guide to Partnering.

Marc Monday  43:57 

Thank you so much, Vince. I really enjoyed it. This is a bucket list item for me. And I’m just so excited to take this one-off. And I look forward to anytime I have an opportunity to speak with you.

Vince Menzione  44:07 

thank you as well.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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