125 | Scaling the partnership pyramid with ops, product, sales and marketing

Jon Busby: Welcome again to another episode of the Tech Marketing Podcast. We're here in our London studio, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Mike Smythe. Is that correct, Mike? It is, it is. Um, Global Tech Alliances Marketing at Checkmarx.

Yes.

So Mike, welcome to the Tech Marketing Podcast. Thank you for having me.

Pleasure to have you here. Good to

Mike Smythe: be

Jon Busby: here. We actually met a while back at when you were at CenturyLink. We did, yeah, a few years ago

Mike Smythe: now.

Jon Busby: So you've had an incredible career, um, up to date and still continuing, of course, in partner and alliance marketing.

Mike Smythe: It's, it's scarily two decades this year. So it's 20 years in.

In channel, um, channel Marketing Alliance is that, that kind of warehouse. So

Jon Busby: how did you, I always say like, channel chooses you, you don't choose channel. How do you fall into the, into the channel?

Mike Smythe: Um, so this is gonna be a slight nepotism story. Um, so good to always enjoy those. So, so many, many moons ago, my dad was at BT for, for 35 years.

Um, he left, he joined a, a small disty, um, did that for a few years. They sold to Westcon. So a big. Big distributor, um, then he set up his own business. So small kind of distribution company and I joined him. I left uni Went went into the business as a warehouse man. Yeah, um, so I am a Official forklift driver if anyone needs needs those skills Yeah, I spent 11 years in in the business and kind of learning everything Channel reseller is very SMB.

Very, you know, it was it was box shifting. It was days before Technology really took off days before cloud. Yeah. Oh wait way before cloud. Yeah so that was that was kind of the origin story and then Kind of moved around a bit and and slowly went up the stack So I think when we met I was at CenturyLink.

Yeah, so kind of went from telephone systems to To a network. Um, left century link move to AWS. So went from the network to cloud and now checkmax. So kind of looking at application security. So what runs in the cloud?

Jon Busby: Yeah, I mean, it's it's an amazing. I didn't realize that you essentially started from.

You can't even get lower than a forklift. No, I'm not putting down forklift drivers, by the way, but I'm just saying like that is the It's the core of you're seeing those sales be delivered and go out all the way up to now influencing them.

Mike Smythe: I mean, it is. I mean, the, the, the time that I spent in that business, you learn custom service, you learn delivery, you learn.

How to scale a business, you know, we were five people when we started. I think it was about 30 Over the course of 10 years and you know for a relatively low tech business. Yeah, that's that's not bad. Yeah Um, so so yeah learn a lot of a lot of life skills from from those years

Jon Busby: Is there anything that you can remember from those initial days of you know working in your father's company?

Yeah that you still apply today?

Mike Smythe: Oh, um, so I was amusing on this. So I turned 40 recently. Um, and the day before I turned 40, I hosted a webinar for an American audience. And I thought back, and I thought that 15 years ago, I was sat there producing a webinar doing very similar, you know, enablement, education and, and delivering effectively the same thing, obviously, a different technology.

And that's not, that's not really changed, you know, but back then webinars were new. Nobody really did them. Yeah. Um, so yeah, lots of, lots of lessons, lots of. skills, lots of competencies that I continue to try and build upon today. So

Jon Busby: you started life in your family company. Yep. Um, when did you make the jump into more of the marketing and the, and the channel, I'm going to say ecosystem side, because we try and use that term now because that's what we're supposed to use.

Um, when did you make that jump onto, onto that side of the business?

Mike Smythe: So I would, I would say, um, it was a relatively, it was both a slow and a fast transition. So I, I. The typical route back then I did school and then I went to university and I did business management and law and a couple of other things.

So I was always looking at marketing is a potential route. Um, but when you're a five person company, you can't have a dedicated marketing head. So you need Thio need to play a lot of roles. And I think actually that That stands true today, you know, even in the role that I do today, which is, which is marketing.

There's a lot of other things that are coming into the mix, whether it's enablement, whether it's, um, supporting deals, supporting account managers, understanding business processes. Marketing is such a, um, It's such a varied practice that you can kind of go in any direction and you have to touch on all of the other parts of the business as well.

It's such a catch all really when you think about it.

Jon Busby: It's um, like one thing, so coming on to your current role at Chet Marks, like what does it involve being a, And I'm going to get this right, a Global Tech Alliances marketing

Mike Smythe: person. So, so it's really interesting. So I, I made up that title when I joined, when I, when I joined the business two years ago, they, they kind of, you know, there was a remit of what I needed to deliver.

But we didn't know what to call me. I sit on the regional and partner team. So I'm technically a field marketing person. Um, but I'm not aligned to any geography. So it's global. Um, and my day to day is, is really a mix of things. So I try and bridge Our product organization, our marketing organization, and increasingly our sales organization.

So, the typical role of a field marketer is, you know, in region activation. It's running events, it's, you know, maybe owning some of the digital strategy for the region. Um, owning the channel strategy for the region, and I do a bit of that, but I also have to balance the healthy tensions that exist between what our product organization is doing, the tech partners, and you know, I loosely call them tech partners because they might be integration partners, they might be cloud partners, AWS is a huge partner of ours, and they all play a slightly different role.

So it's not channeling that channel or ecosystem. Historically was delivery. It was either fulfillment or partner sourced, and then you'd support a deal through. Tech alliances is wholly different. So it's, it's more around how you build out that joint messaging, how you, you build that joint story, and then how you take that to market.

Um, and there's always, there's always facets to that around whether you're looking at the, Our product and and what we're trying to do with tech partnerships, and then there's the other side of the coin. So what are our partners? Where's where's the value for them in partnering with us? Yeah, and there's always balances in in that organization

Jon Busby: I'm really glad you said some of those something because it's it's something that's been going through my head a lot at the moment Even for us and that we're a very different company.

We're not selling technology the same way you are at Checkmarx but you know, there is a very clear distinction I think between You The old school way of partnering which was very one way like you've said very transactional Compared to the more modern way, which we tend to refer to as ecosystems And when you take that up to the alliance level, it's really around.

It's It's not gonna be a question about who can send who leads the fastest. It's it's really it's much more strategic

Mike Smythe: We disagree so I don't I don't necessarily disagree, but I think you have to play the game of A lot of, and I'm not speaking necessarily from a Checkmarx perspective here, to be very clear on that.

Um, executive leaders, in their mind, partnerships, ecosystems, What they came up with so they are looking at how do we measure this and it's yeah, it's leads. It's pipeline And a lot of the time and the job that I do and I've got some phenomenal counterparts in in the product organization and elsewhere at a check mark specifically is How do you position to executive leadership?

The actual long term value of the partnerships that you're building. Yep, because you can't look at them as Transactional, as you say, and I do push back a little bit on this ecosystems because I think it's so, um, it lacks specificity over where you play in that ecosystem, because it's a spectrum, you know, within an ecosystem, it could be fulfillment on a kind of reseller level, but the ecosystem is so wide, so I much prefer alliances because I think that delineates between where you're necessarily driving pipeline and you can look more into influenced and things like reducing churn.

Jon Busby: Yep. Yep. So I couldn't agree with you more actually on the ecosystem piece. I struggled with that definition for, goodness, probably 18 months. Yep. Where, when, when it started to get used in the, in the, uh, In the world, in the ecosystem, um, you know, some of the best definitions I've seen are non transactional.

Recognizing non transactional partners, um, is one way of putting it. Um, like how, how, how have you tried to make it more specific? Like what's been your

Mike Smythe: So, um, Great question. And it's a difficult one to answer. So I can certainly talk about I don't think anyone's got an answer for it. No, no, I don't think they do.

And I think as we, you know, I've, I spent some time at AWS running their, their EMEA ISV kind of go to market, um, from a partner marketing perspective. And you have to kind of look at the organization that you're in will define alliances and ecosystems. Slightly differently. Mm hmm. Certainly when when I was at AWS, we were the we were the big fish in the pond So everybody played in our program.

Jon Busby: Yeah

Mike Smythe: a Checkmarx. It's different because we're you know midsize with 20 years old There were thereabouts with not IPO'd but you know, it's it's it's a thousand person business So it's you know, it's it's not small Um, and we have partners that are both smaller than us and larger than us. And the way that we have structured our program is to allow us to both set some guardrails for the smaller, smaller partners we may have, and also allow us to play in the programs of our large partners, the AWS, the

ServiceNow.

Mike Smythe: And getting back to your original question of how do you define Those relationships and and the metrics you kind of have to take a step back and and look for you and your organization Which of these programs is more strategically valuable to us. Yeah, and which ones are we going to place our bets on in terms of Um, awareness activity in terms of demand gen activity, and then look who's leaning in because we have some great partners who are significantly smaller than us, but they'll lean in really heavily.

So that gives us an indication of where there might be kind of mutual material benefit to doing more with that type of

Jon Busby: partner. And it's something we've referred to on the podcast before is, are you the burger? Are you the fries? It's one way of, you know, you know, is it, are, is someone buying? AWS first, as an example, or are they buying another, and actually, thinking about a big partner like Amazon, they're probably playing both.

Mike Smythe: Oh, it's not only they're playing both, it's, it's in that relationship. Oftentimes, AWS is, is the burger shop as well. Because we're, you know, marketplaces, and that's a whole discussion for another day, but, um, marketplaces are fundamentally changing the way that a lot of enterprise and mid market procure software.

It's changing the way that. Teams work from legal to procurement. It is really um, driving a lot of change, but I think people do over egg things. In some instances, the importance of that, because fundamentally you still need that strength in partnership and that commitment before you look at a marketplace to really deliver the value.

Jon Busby: I definitely want to come back to that in a bit because it's, you've, that's a whole, you're right, that's probably a whole separate podcast. Yeah, absolutely. The, um, but coming, you're talking about how you, you know, decide some of the smaller partners, some of the bigger ones, which ones commit to you, which ones you commit to them.

Like, how do you report that? You know, you talked about measurement a moment ago, like how do you report on that back to the board or back to your leadership to say, these are the, what metrics do you look at? What do they, what's important in those relationships?

Mike Smythe: Depends on who you talk to. So if you're, um, kind of my day to day is, you know, I report into various stakeholders, our CRO, our CMO, you know, you've got the CEO who, who takes an interest in these things.

Um, that's less, that's more of a, kind of a regular cadence of reporting. And that is, you know, pipeline, number of partners, number of opportunities. Influence, you know, there's a whole, a whole group of metrics that you can look at at that level. Um, for me, when I joined Checkmarx two years ago, we, and Checkmarx, and actually maybe it's good if I spend a bit of time describing who, who Checkmarx is, because people may not be aware.

So we're an application security testing company. So we secure an organization's code when they're developing it. So typically our buyers are Large financial institutions, um, large entertainment, retail, manufacturing, people like Disney, people like Visa. Um, and we sit across their software development lifecycle.

Yep. And we, we ensure protection when the application is being built. So, the thing for me and the real draw coming to Checkmarx is they just launched three years ago, their first cloud native product. Platform. Um, and because the nature of this platform touches so many other pieces of an organization's processes, there's a massive opportunity for partnerships and integrations.

So you're integrating both into The core development processes they have with some of the SDLC tools. We're integrating with our cloud and runtime partners, so some of the fastest growing cyber security companies today partner with us to provide the left hand side of the security envelope, if you will.

So with that in mind, and going back to the kind of the original point, is there's so much scope in these partnerships to deliver. Value for me when I set the program up the the kind of two core metrics I looked at was rate of partner signup and rate of partner activation and Those two things if I look back a year when we launched the program, I think we had six launch partners We're gonna we're gonna exit the first year with about 50 of which we've probably got around 10 That we have activated in terms of go to market.

Jon Busby: Yeah. And just to be, just to be clear on when you say rate of here, is that the velocity or the It's

Mike Smythe: both. Both. So it's, it's the, the overall count per category. Yeah. Um, and obviously when you're building a business Program you can categorize in all sorts of ways for us. We always do things with a customer lens first.

So we've grouped them into logical groupings from a customer's perspective and for me the the the real important thing is it is so easy to fall into the trap of Logo vanity. How many logos can I put on my partnerships page? You know, it 500 organizations, but if you've got no material relationship With those partners or there's no material available integration, it's it's meaningless for customers.

So, um, I'm, I'm very specific that all of the partners we list as partners have a generally available integration, which means that a customer, if they have us, And they have the partner installed in their system. They can very easily connect the two and start to deliver that joint value. Um, and we won't go away from that because it's, it's a customer first mindset.

Jon Busby: I, I, I'm actually having to being a techie at heart. Like I've not used Checkmarx myself. You know, we use a variety of different static and dynamic like code analysis tools. Um, but. Having tried to deploy some of these having, you know, I think what you've done there is Quite clever in the sense of it's a very defined goal.

Like you must have a GA available product otherwise, because it's so easy to fall into a trap of, uh, you know what, let's make a beta version or let's release something behind the scenes. Or we've done lots of good work together and without something tangible that a customer can see it, it becomes, you know, we were actually talking earlier in the, in the pre recording.

Um, just before you came up, Mike, around, um, organizations that do this very well. And there were some organizations, some that you've worked with in the past, um, that taught, tell a very good story. But when it comes to actually deploying it,

Yeah,

Jon Busby: it's vaporware. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so I think, I think you may not realize what you've done there, but I think it's really interesting how you've made that requirement that it has to be GA.

Mike Smythe: Well, and that's not to say all of the vaporware, the beta, the canary, all of that. Doesn't happen because it absolutely does. Yeah, um and oftentimes if we've got a Mutual customer who has been the, the spark of requirement from both sides. Yep. They will happily be a, a trialer, beta, they will, they will help us develop the integration.

They'll help us, um, kind of rationalize how we do this, why we do it in this way. Um, there's a great use case actually that we're going to be diving into with Sysdig really, really soon. So we, we've partnered with Sysdig, um, for, I think publicly about six months prior to that, it was a bit longer. Um, and we partnered with Sysdig so we can bring container insights, which is what Sysdig is known for, into our platform and, and, you know, But broadly surface where vulnerabilities are running at runtime in in their containers.

We've been working with Sysdig now on on the bidirectional integration where we can send results to them. And we're actually using AWS Lambda functions to achieve that. So this is where we start to see there's a use case, it's driven by a customer, and then we're actually leveraging a cloud provider to be that glue.

And for me, that's great to see that that kind of thing actually. Absolutely amazing. Because it means for me that the partners we've chosen and the products team do an amazing job at, you know, going out and finding those partners who are going to deliver real value. Um, to see that coming together in a product that's supported in multiple ways is amazing.

Jon Busby: There's a, there's, there's A couple of things that again as a technologist get me excited and then I want to let's keep going into that on down that product Avenue, but the, um, like often when you're looking at some of these partnerships, there's going to be quite an investment up front to discover what the integration points are to do the engineering work both from their side and your side, you know, there's from my perspective, I think there's quite a high rate of failure of those projects.

Um, like how before you were able to report that. To any to you, you know to your team and certainly for the engineering teams where they their time is probably quite stretched and Costly. Yep. How how do you get that sell in to keep the momentum up to get something across the line? Um, now what?

Mike Smythe: Tactics or things have you seen?

Yeah, so I think you almost have to take a step back from You don't want to get into that situation fundamentally. You don't want to get into a situation where , every integration or every partnership requires an an outsized level of engineering investment. Mm-Hmm. on either side, because if you do that, you are, you are throttling your ability to scale.

So the approach that we've taken is, um, a standardized set of rich APIs Yep. That expose, um, very much the AWS approach. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That exposes core capabilities. Um, and we provide those, those APIs, the documentation and the support for partners to write integrations to us. Um, and that's kind of a partner led motion.

So we'll obviously support them from a, um, a technical point of view. And then when we get to the point that we think there'll be a generally available integration, that's kind of when I step in. And do the more go to market conversations around the level of, of, uh, Investment we both want to make, you know, is it, is it a webinar talking about it or is it a networking dinner, you know, RSA in the U.

1. You know, this is, there's a spectrum of that. Yep. So, so our approach has absolutely been let's, let's standardize, let's productize partnerships as much as we can. And then there are, um, where you place your big bets. So we look at the areas that will make the most impact for customers and where we think the market is going.

Um, and we look at the players in those spaces and we kind of weigh up. Options in that group and fill out whether they're interested to, to work together. Um, in most instances where, you know, Wiz and Sysdig are great examples where the cloud native application protection platforms. So the, the CNAPs and the CNASs are exploding in, in terms of growth.

Um, and we're, we're partnering with, with many of them to provide that. That lends back into the development side. And from a customer's perspective, what they can then do is they can can holistically look at runtime protection and pre deployment protection and marry those two things together. Um, which, you know, increases fidelity from their perspective for vulnerability mitigation.

So there's a whole load of benefits, but in order to get there, you need that really strong, um, trust. Alliances, partnership, ecosystem, whatever you call it to really drive that awareness and that that ease of ease of integration.

Jon Busby: So coming back, what I'm kind of the common thread I'm seeing here almost because you're getting involved almost quite late on in some of those product conversation, not late, not really late on, but some of it.

They've done the feasibility, the partners, the partners interested, then you may go and find a customer together. That is a. A cross between product and I'm going to roll engineering into product for a second. Um, marketing, which is obviously you and sales because you need the customer to be part of it as well.

Like we were talking in our pre pre call about that being like the trifecta.

Mike Smythe: We were on and post that call. I've thought about it a bit more. I think. Um, I think the analogy I used at the time was there's a, there's a triangle or trifecta, however you put it, that, that you need for a successful tech partner, tech alliance, tech ecosystem play, you need everybody at the table.

You need sales, you need marketing, and you need products. I'm actually going to add to that and I'm going to make it a pyramid because I think there is a, there's a base that crosses all of them, which is operations. So commercial operations, um, not oftentimes really talked about on a, on a marketing focused podcast.

But I think the ops role, the reporting role, the, the analytics in the background, all of that is hugely important, but focusing on the kind of main three of sales, technical and marketing, you can have sales and marketing. Aligned and not product and you won't deliver value for customers because the product there's no differentiator It's not adding any any additional value you can have Technical product and marketing.

But if you haven't got sales, you're not going to drive any meaningful revenue. And on the flip side, if you've got sales and product, but no marketing, you're really limiting your reach. So you have to have all three or a plan to have all three on a per partner basis. To really, really ignite that flywheel of customer success, innovation, you know, it breeds testimonials, it breeds case studies, it breeds market awareness, and that will continue and scale out.

And feedback, frankly, to the importance of putting more time in the engineering. Because these integrations, often there's a kind of a minimum viable product that we jointly deliver. There's always so much more scope to do more. Um, but you need to prove that there's going to be revenue at some point. But

Jon Busby: you mentioned commercial operations there as the foundation.

Yes. So what do they add to those three?

Mike Smythe: Well, if you don't have them, what happens? So what, what you have and, and kind of is, is commercial operations or, or operations more broadly? Because it, it takes a team. Um, And it touches on measurement. So are you aligned from a from a goals perspective? For example, are you able to report in your CRM of choice whether an integration is active in an account?

If you're running a SAS product, have you got a tool that Delivers telemetry to the organization that's responsible for looking at partnerships so that you get that visibility and insight into the traction that your efforts are making. And if you don't, you're flying blind and you're going often on the wrong track.

Gut feeling or you're going on, um, those outlier deals that will, will land and will make a partnership look great, but they're not repeatable because it's a very specific use case. So all of these things, I think from an operations point of view, if you haven't got the foundations of your ops right, Then that you know, the three way sales products marketing is never going to take flight It's

Jon Busby: in the in fact what really sparked my thought there was it's very similar to running any kind of transformation process And it we Again, like many businesses, and I'm sure you're the same at Chet Marks and every and every business that's probably listening to this podcast now You know, we're all going to a big transformation with AI.

Yep. And one decision we made is having what's called a transformation monitoring team Which sounds really technical, but essentially if you've got sales marketing and product all working together on a common goal You've got some very big egos that are very good at telling very good stories Um, big stories.

Yeah. You've got sales who will probably tell you that that deal is worth billions. Um, you've got marketing who own most of the metrics and can probably tell quite a good story. Um, so you need that commercial operations team. I think as you've, as you mentioned there to, to mark your homework, uh, for you in some ways to, to come in and level set and be like, this is, this is the difference it's made.

And even just that minor element point you made there around, can you tell if someone is using your product in the CRM. That is so often forgotten about. Yep. Um, the, just, I I would probably wager that many, many partnership deals haven't happened because they haven't been able to measure that success because of that.

And many have happened that probably shouldn't have happened. Yes, for sure. Because they weren't able to. Yeah.

Mike Smythe: There, there is a flip side to that. Um, and the flip side is if you, um, operate a business at scale. And you put measurement metrics around certain things and you give the, um, the people at the coalface of those relationships the ability to, um, let's say, tag an opportunity as having a tech partner involved or, um, being attributed to a partner related marketing campaign without the checks and balances of, um, Um, validation.

Yep. You run the risk of, of driving the business in a direction of doing things for the metrics. Yep. And not doing things for the outcome that you're looking to drive.

Jon Busby: Yes. Yeah. So, essentially, you'll over optimize for the metrics. Absolutely. Instead of, instead of, instead of the customer outcomes.

Mike Smythe: Instead of customer outcomes, and it always comes down to relationship.

Mm hmm. If you, if you're running everything on metrics, Mm hmm. You for sure will get in a situation where you're sat in front of a partner who May have built a great integration with you. You may have joint customers, but if you're not hitting the metrics and your alliances team, that is what they're being told to hit.

You will deprioritize that part partnership for the wrong reason. Um, so I think I think relationship and emotional maturity. And it's one of the things that really scares me about AI, by the way, another conversation for another day. Um, You've got to look at things both objectively and of the the art and the science and really make sure that you're not going off track just to meet an artificial number.

Jon Busby: This is something that, you know, I've always personally I've always struggled with right because I am someone that likes to see a metric. Yep Yet there's been so many examples of people I've interviewed on this podcast where yeah It can be one dinner meeting that sparks a conversation and then how it creates an entire not just marketing campaign Campaign but entire line of product.

Yeah, so we recently had a Sales leader from Cisco on and he talked around how one conversation over dinner with a partner and a charity sparked a essentially saving all the rhinos on the planet, um, from being poached, right? Well, maybe that might be going a little bit far, but like they essentially went down from 15 poaching incidents a week down to zero.

Just due to the fact they had dinner together and discussed a problem and then decide to solve it. Like, so how do you, how do you mold those two mindsets together? Like that, like, I'm

Mike Smythe: I'm not sure you wholly can. I think you, you're, I think you, well You can't, and you know, I'm hugely fortunate in my current role that we've got a leadership team.

Um, who, who give people the latitude to make mistakes. They give people a voice to, um, to have differing opinions, um, and to fight the corner. But equally, it's a business. So we, we have got core metrics, core goals that we're driving to, and the team is maniacally focused on that. But as long as you are able to balance the metric driven behavior the longer term strategy work.

And they're not mutually exclusive either. Um, and it comes back to measurement. And and you kind of triggered something in me saying, you know, you're a man for metrics. My question to that is always over what timeline? Because you can say it's in a year, you can say it's in six months. A lot of the partnerships and alliances and ecosystem players, they play out over Timeline of years.

And over that time, you will absolutely have a change in executive leadership. So you will need to continue to reiterate the story, the reasoning, the impetus to do these things. And metrics are just a tool to do that.

Jon Busby: See, I think you've and you've triggered something in me there as well, right? Because I think there's a lot that I'm going to say Wall Street is the best way to describe it has to answer on impacting.

technological innovation and partnerships because you know that timeline you just mentioned some of this stuff does take you you can't develop an integration at A strategic level between two organizations inside the three months at least you can't develop it test it get it to market And show progress yet.

We are now so driven by those quarterly metrics that I think again it puts a big risk on How you can, you know, whether you can

Mike Smythe: even go ahead with a project like that. It, it, it does and it doesn't. I think, um, one of the trends I'm certainly seeing is, and it is the whole ecosystem word. Yep. Um, partnerships for, for a very long time were not the sexy, Thing in the room.

They were the thing that nobody really knew how to measure the thing that nobody really knew what to do with certainly in a in a In a general business sense outside of kind of traditional channel telecoms being the big one What you are starting to see is more Um, more structure, more experience, more strategic leaders coming into Alliance roles.

And I think what you're starting to see is those integrations, those alliances are becoming strategic differentiators in the market. Yeah. So whilst Wall Street, the wall streetification of of timelines and and quarters, et cetera. Fundamentally, most of the founders and the executive teams of these organizations, um, they're looking for an exit, an IPO.

They're looking for their next, their next gig. Um, so they are willing to, you know, do that 10 percent of non attributable activity. Because it may have an outsized impact on the future direction of their careers and their company's careers. Interesting.

Jon Busby: I think, yeah, but it's It's just how you continue to justify it that I keep going back to my head like the easiest way I can think about this, and this is very non moving from being very strategic and board level to very simple for a second, you know, I was speaking to another actually exec that was in charge of partnerships, and he was mentioning how he was out in flying out to New Zealand next month to go and spend a few days with a partner and I asked like, How do you justify that spend that and that time out of your day as an executive?

The answer I got really was, we just have to like we, you know, they've they've just signed on with us. We need to show that we're willing. Yeah. So it's like it's At a very simplest level, it's like, how do you add some metrics around that relationship that I still haven't been able to wrap my head around?

And I think the answer might just be, you can't. You have to sometimes, it's like alchemy,

Mike Smythe: I guess. Yeah, it is. It's a little bit like alchemy, and it's a little bit like, Um, it's a little bit like dating. Yes. Okay. So, so on a, on a purely personal level. We do love a dating analogy on the podcast. Do you? I didn't know that.

Maybe I've hit upon a recurring theme, um, with you, but it's a bit like dating in that you, um, throughout the course of your life, whether you're, you know, how you approach relationships says, it says a lot and is a good indicator of how those relationships will last, mature and change over time. And I think the The best partnership leaders I've worked with have been people first mm-Hmm.

process second and technology third. And a lot of what I see, and, and maybe I'm in a LinkedIn bubble or a social media bubble, but there seems to be a real push at the moment to wrap technology around partnerships and alliances. There's a lot of, you know, PRMs and CRMs that are tailored and, and that kind of thing.

Fundamentally, it's great. Go invest in a tool, but understand why you're building the tool. If, if your business is, you know, if you've got 10 strategic partners, you should be able to manage those relationships with a team of, you know, two or three people who are really focused on those 10. If you're looking to go and build a channel of, A hundred, two hundred partners in Europe or globally.

Um, I don't think technology is ever gonna It will support scaling, but I don't think it will ever scale. I. e. drive the scaling. It's the people and the process first.

Jon Busby: I, I, as a technologist, you'd think I'd react violently to that. Um, and it's been a learning I've gone through. Like, we've, we've very I've got many, many case studies that I can go through on this.

But, if you try and start technology first, And you build it, they will not come like you've got a completely agree with you. It's one of my learnings I've I've seen is you've got to start with with people and the relationships. Um, you've got to make sure you've got a solid process. And then technology is the flywheel that can make it speed up.

Um, but you can't just rely on it being a magic bullet. Um, so completely agree. So that brings us on kind of the future. Of, uh, of tech alliances and partnerships like what trends are exciting you that you're seeing, uh, what and what trend scare you as well. You mentioned AI earlier. I did. So I

Mike Smythe: let let's tackle AI for now.

So, um, At CheckMarkz on a corporate level, we've taken a different tack to a lot of the market, you know, we haven't just gone, let's plug in ChatGPT or one of the other LLMs to deliver something for customers because, um, I think there's risk and given the type of security company that we are, um, we would not want to introduce that level of risk into our operations and our customers.

Um, I think on a marketing lens, um, I'm now able to tune out anything that says in today's rapidly changing world, if they delve into anything, I have, I've got a list of maybe 40 phrases and keywords that I know in my mind. And if I see that in a blog post, um, it immediately makes me think that the person who is, Saying and sharing such stuff is not an expert, does not know what they're doing, or haven't taken the time.

Make sure I note

Jon Busby: these down. Yeah, haven't, yeah,

Mike Smythe: haven't taken the time to actually build something that has any value. They're filling this void with AI generated nonsense and bots are liking it and responding to it. And I, maybe I am old school, maybe I'm over the hill, but, um, I would rather people, you know, Do one thing a week well, then 90 things a week generated by AI that has no meaning.

Completely agree. And

Jon Busby: actually I saw a stat last week, uh, of number of emails. It's a really good blog post where someone's analysed every email they've received. Yep. And what it talks about and the volume that they've been receiving them. Um, and Post Chat GPT, you can see a massive spike where everyone is using, I'm going to say, Martek with thinly veiled Chat GPT integrations.

And you see, you can see a huge spike, but we are now moving towards a world where, and I think the education analogy is the funniest, right? You've got students using Chat GPT to Write their essays for them and then and you've got the the professors saying and teachers saying don't do that But then using charity PD to mark them Yeah And so we've just got bots talking to bots and the same thing's gonna happen with emails as well Oh, just it's it's I'm come I would rather someone spent the time writing a well written email that was personalized to me Yes, and short.

Yep, then then some of the drivel that we get with with AI Yeah, and I think we are gonna head for that correction if we continue in this car

Mike Smythe: I hope we do And it saddens me a bit that, um, of all the use cases of AI marketing, which should be something that is rooted in psychology, behavioral science, um, personal connection has been the thing that has, from my perspective anyway, sparked so many third party tools.

I think we should be using AI. And the, the large language models in the art, I was doing this before AI was a thing with Databricks at AWS and various other places to do the menial stuff that people don't or can't do. Um, there's a lot of reporting, number crunching, actual use cases where there is value using AI and the, the horrific environmental impact of, of some of these things.

To write a landing page that is often quicker for you to write yourself than using ChatGPT, um, worries me hugely.

Jon Busby: Especially, but I actually was thinking about that exact point, um, earlier this week actually, where You have, let's use an LLM, let's make it more general. Let's not just chat GPT's fault, but you have an LLM writing the copy, and you have one on the other side reading it and summarising it for people.

Just think of the environmental impact and sustainability of both of those

Mike Smythe: items doing that together. It's crazy. And then, I'm sure we are not far away. From having deepfake video generated webinars where the script is, you know, written by ChatGPTL, take two solution briefs and they'll generate some talking heads and yeah, and everybody will be sat bored rigid because there's no original content.

It's not, um,

Jon Busby: sea of same is what? Yeah, absolutely. Um, okay. So the AI scares us. What excites us about tech alliances?

Mike Smythe: So I think AI. You know, in all seriousness, I think the, um, in alliances, you know, there are, um, there's been some seismic shifts over the past 5 10 years. The big hyperscalers, cloud providers have driven a lot of innovation because people can, can experiment for relatively little money.

Um, I think marketplaces, uh, are not only becoming important because they have been for, for five years, but I think we'll start to see marketplaces. mature into proper multi party, um, kind of, you know, two or three ISVs who have got an integration bundling an offer that's bespoke for a client. I think there's a lot of, of automation in that and I think, um, I think security is where it's going to happen first because of the depth of and breadth of vendors that are on the marketplaces for that.

So I think, I think they will play a critical role. Um, I think some of the, um, approaches from an executive level will start to see, um, and start to better understand the role that alliances can play in those strategic visions. Yeah. I think we've, we've definitely broken the first wave of that. Um, and I think we'll continue to, to see more.

Jon Busby: I, I, again, I, we've done a lot of agreeing on this podcast. Um, I think we've done some disagreeing as well, but the, um, I'm definitely seeing there'll be more. Yeah, those two trends have continued over the last Five years. Um, I think the next jump is in the alliances space where the hyperscalers are looking to drive their own bottom line up and they see that as a way of doing it.

But they've also got a lot to give and a lot of resources where they can help companies move faster. So I think if we can get aligned around some of the right gen AI solutions or the right services, I think we're definitely seeing acceleration there. And I'm seeing that creep into everything from, you know, simple products.

Delivery down at the bottom level all the way up into the c suite. Yep. Um, final question, Mike, if you were to give a piece of advice to a future channel or alliance leader, let's say back, you know, someone that's driving a forklift now in a warehouse. Yep. Um, delivering a box shifting boxes. What would you what would you give them?

Take risks.

Mike Smythe: Okay. Never be, never be afraid to take risks. When have you, can you give me a memory of when you've taken a risk? Oh, I've, I've, I've, I've taken lots of risks. Have they always paid off? No. Good God, no. Um, excuse, excuse the language, but no, absolutely not. Um, I, you know, I've, I've taken risks, um, that have paid off.

I've taken risks that haven't paid off. I think some of the ones, um, that paid off tremendously. You know, I, I was at Central Inc. I think when we, when we first met, um, I left a, you know, comfortable job that I've been promoted in relatively recently to join AWS. Big, big, you know, unknown, um, at the time that was just, that was before COVID.

Um, Obviously, when went through the pandemic, um, I changed roles a couple of times at AWS, ended up running the, um, or being in the team that ran the relationship between AWS and Salesforce. Um, and I chose to leave and everybody thought I was crazy. Um, why, why would you possibly leave AWS? You know, this was, this was two years ago.

Um, but I wasn't growing anymore. I, I wasn't finding those opportunities to grow. to do things differently and to forge my own path. And I think that was, that was a big risk, you know, leaving. People are often, um, don't leave AWS for their own benefit. reasons, um, but I did and, and it's, for me, it's paid dividends so far.

Um, really found a, uh, a place where you can explore your passion, which is, yeah, hugely fulfilling. I, I

Jon Busby: think that's a great piece of advice for any marketeer really is to continue to have that growth mindset. So Mike, thank you very much for joining me on the Tech Marketing Podcast. It's been a pleasure.

Yeah. Thank you, Jon.