[Music] okay hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the captain's Vlog I'm today joined by Sarah Van Sickle Sarah hello hi thanks for having me pleasure pleasure or bonjour as I should say Sarah's in France yes exactly we're based in Paris brilliant um Sarah if you could just start by giving us a little bit about yourself and what it is that to does yeah sure so uh as for me I actually fun fact because today we're start starting to talk about SAS and all that good stuff but I actually
got my career started off at UNESCO where I worked on Partnerships with private tech companies and UNESCO on specific initiatives for women's development so completely different world um I switched Place yeah I switched place and started working then in SAS about four or five years ago um specifically with airol where I led the the partnership with Salesforce and so at air call we said Salesforce ecosystem meaning not just Salesforce directly but also all of their Channel partners and Si who wor
k within that space and then more recently I left to join Topo like you said to head up Partnerships and marketing and Topo is a buyer engagement platform that helps B2B sellers better connect with their buyers in order to accelerate closing and we say platform because we go beyond just sharing content and the contracts and different things that maybe salespeople need in their process but we're really going to go in we're going to automate we're going to suggest and we're going to really allevia
te a lot of the the admin work of the salesperson on a day-to-day basis got it okay brilliant that makes sense so Topo I guess it's is letting Salesforce do what it does best and then this is coming in to make sure that the the the rep is on on track and and doing what they can do best exactly our idea is that we're going to work as a collaborative space space right with the buyer and with the seller and we're going to put all that information all of that interaction that you could possibly imag
ine having with your customer and putting it directly into Salesforce which can allow you to set certain triggers different kpis to help you really better understand what's going on in your pipe yeah brilliant brilliant now um I think firstly before we continue there's some congratulations uh in order um we've seen that this week uh too has been accepted into the winter 2024 batch of of Y combinators so congratulations for that um how how's it been since that announcement it's been crazy it's be
en so quick H thank you so much as well like for the thanks uh we're the whole team is very very excited um you know we found out a few weeks ago and the whole team was just sitting there we were waiting from the for the call from San Francisco and then we got it and we were looking at Dan our CEO we were looking at his face trying to understand what was going on if the feedback was positive or negative and it ended up being positive and we were just really really happy and very happy to share t
hat um with our community brilliant brilliant so what is that actually going to demean for toppo and the team like moving forward what does it enable you to do yeah so the big thing is that right now as you said we're based in Paris so we are going to be picking up shop we're going to be moving to San Francisco in the beginning of the year uh to work with the entire YC team and specifically with our different advisers so for us what that means is obviously from a business perspective an accelera
tion on the American market right so us Marketplace it's huge we want to crack into it and we want to get in there early and so obviously leveraging the different context the different network that we'll have around us with YC is going to be key to help us do that from the beginning and then on the tech side what we're learning to do is really or what we're striving to do is really to develop this idea of a buyer engagement platform so again going Beyond just the sharing of content and tracking
of content but thinking more of how can I use AI within this space how can we suggest different content different things that salesp people can use can create different next steps things that maybe their buyers want to see so how can we bring that next level of intelligence into sales yeah brilliant um and if if I may pry um what does the process look like for applying to Y combinator and uh and generally being successful what what Loops do you have to run through if if you can go back that far
yeah so I mean there's different there's different rounds right so first you're going to do um like a video application that can only last a minute I think that's the biggest thing that came as a takeaway from YC was that everything is very quick right so you have to do your pitch very quickly be convincing next you're going to go into a live interview if you pass on to the next round um and that only lasts about 15 minutes right so you have to be extremely effective very very hon on it uh under
stand exactly what your value added is and be able to express that so really my best advice to anybody out there is one to apply because you know if you don't apply you'll never get in right so take the chance and do it it's also even if you don't get in I think it's a great experience of learning how to really hone your your message and how to learn how to express that effectively um and then my second piece of advice is just practice right keep practicing keep doing it over and over again repe
ating uh we spent you know a few hours testing different types of questions that they could ask during the 15 minutes and correcting each other on on how we could be better in responding so practice makes perfect it is yeah definitely and it's an interesting point though I mean as marketers we we we absolutely know that it's harder to say things in less words isn't it so oh it's so challenging that one minute video that would be a nightmare for for me to oh yeah yeah you want to talk about yeah
exactly there's so much that you want to to to come across and then the question is okay like really what's the priority here right so it really forces you to make a strategic decision which is why it's so good of an exercise so yeah yeah yeah and do they do they prize much into like your usual business metrics for traction and things like that or is it more about the idea uh yeah they do look into how you're doing in terms of business and they are definitely concerned with your objectives so wh
y is going to go after people let's say who are bold companies who are really putting themselves out there trying to put High objectives and who are actually on their way to attain them so definitely keep that in mind right when you're when you're pitching and even if you know because YC you don't necessarily have to already be let's say um commercializing you could maybe just be pitching an idea right they also do take some companies who are earlier than maybe where toppo is today and so in tha
t case I would say it's more about maybe your timeline maybe the number of B users things like that so it depends on where you are when you decide to apply yeah that makes sense and uh is is the whole team moving moving out there and staying there the whole team is moving and staying out there so we managed to get a house in San Francisco we are all going to be staying in this house uh we're excited if any of your users have any recommendations for San Francisco you can let us know um I'm Americ
an but it'll be my first time out west so I'm looking forward to that and then you know the rest of the team is French so this is going to be a very let's say fun and interesting cultural experience for all of us Yeah Yeah from Silicon stier to Silicon Valley what a change exactly you got it um well yeah congratulations again um and uh yeah audience if if there's any houses out there you know in San Francisco drop it in the comments let us know um Sarah so um obvious it sounds like you've alread
y done a load with Topo but you've already been in the role for a couple of months so um firstly how's that bin been dropped in at the deep end of this respect has it been crazy yeah definitely crazy I mean I think I think anybody who's come in I mean right it's always the case when you come into an company that's already been started I think it's more the case when you come into a startup uh so Dan and Rob and I the the the co-founders we've been in conver ation for a long time we used to work
together at air call that's how we know each other um and I knew I wanted to eventually go come work with them and start this adventure but we were trying to work on the right timing right so then we eventually found that worked it out I came right after the summer vacation um in September October and uh we jumped head first into it running a million miles per hour so obviously the thing that was the most difficult for me I think in the beginning was understanding okay what has been created what
has been done today and then what do I need to do right especially when it comes to Partnerships because I was coming from a place where if I wanted things like a one pager or a demo video it was there already created for me I just had to go and push it out now I would get to a conversation with my partner they'd be like well cool send me some materials over and I'd say to Dan okay well yeah like what do we have he's like well that's your job actually so time you to go create some things so I m
ean it's it can be overwhelming it's also very exciting because now having that um let's say mindset of maybe things that I wanted before things that I wanted to see the way I wanted to see it be done from my experience as a salesperson as a partnership person now I can go and create that right so that's really cool um now the game is just about really prioritizing and understanding what is going to be the best return for the investment of my time because obviously I'm just one human um I can't
unfortunately spend all my time with all of my partners even though I'd love to do so I can't do every single marketing um initiative so we really need to to step back and measure that and understand really what's going to make the difference for Topo moving [Music] forward this is mge CEO of rocket phone. and our CEO this means merg is often away from his desk mud uses his mobile for all kinds of business calls but it's a pain to remember the outcomes and keep his CRM [Music] updated so that's
why we built rocket cell with our eim all you need to worry about is having great conversations no need for an app just make and receive calls like normal rocket cell records transcribes and analyzes each conversation automatically logging it in Salesforce with a recording transcript cool summary coaching tips and much more join the wait list today and experience the world's first business mobile network for Salesforce and how do you how do you do that prioritization obviously Topo is quite a ne
w company this role is new um draw on to to kind of give you that Insight of what will work or if at all so I would break that up into two let's say I want to answer that question kind of in two parts so the first answer to it is let's say from like an organizational point of view when deciding what to do within your day or what action to take forward I think you always need to say like okay this is something that's going to get me a quick whim and this is something that's going to be important
in the long term and it's important that you go back and fourth and are able to do both because if you're too focused on the quick win then you're going to eventually lose line with your strategy right so you always need to be threading that back and same thing if you're very strategy focused well then you're never going to be actually doing right and in a startup we need to do we need to sell we need to get our company out there so making sure that that's really being effectively woven througho
ut your day uh is important then when it comes to actually like really nitty-gritty like how do I decide what I'm doing so a lot of it comes from prior experience understanding okay this was effective with Partners before I think this is going to be effective next um studying right taking data on what our prospects what our clients are asking for even if we're just in the beginning stage already that's extremely extremely helpful um and then I would say just like a little tip for myself is um I
tag and I color coordinate my Google Calendar and so that helps me really understand where I'm spending my time right so every single day I understand okay I spent a lot of time this week on channel Partnerships maybe I need to back off spend some more time on marketing next week or how is Alliance Partnerships doing right I can pick up and move and be a little bit more flexible because I have a better understanding of where my time and my energy is going that's actually a really great time mana
gement hack there of using go super helpful and it's pretty it is yeah I mean I always encourage my uh our sdrs to say like have a have a block for email have a block for calling but of course in any job it's it's really valuable if you can block up your CER not only are you focusing yourself of when you do the work you actually then get to see the metrics afterwards and say okay I'm way too long on this exactly exactly no it's super important because you know that's the thing if you realize too
like okay maybe I spent five hours on X action and it only gave me y result well then you say okay well you know next time I'm not going to do that you know that didn't really work or I'm going to find another way of doing it that's a bit more efficient so yeah understanding your role within the process is important and maybe you spent that long in it because it was easy or or fun but again if it's not getting the return can it yeah exactly yeah un unfortunately it is like that uh you always go
t to see what's actually coming from from what you do and so what are the um speaking of that I mean what what are the things that you found um you know what activities we've found that really work um to to get leads from let's say Salesforce as as a partner we're using at the moment what what are the what are the the high performing activities that work with partner relationship with Salesforce yeah so Salesforce specifically are Partnerships in general Salesforce specific both both okay um so
if we're talking about Partners In general the key thing to driving leads is is to make it easy for them right you want to take as the Pam you want to take a lot of the responsibility right on your shoulders so that way your partner all that they need to focus on is identifying opportunities and selling um so with that there's different levers that you can pull so one of them can be partner marketplaces it's always a good idea to have a page to have your logo to have UTM links in place so you ca
n track these leads all that good stuff it sounds like a bit like checking the boxes and oh is that actually really going to generate anything but it's really important to have that base and the reason why is because like in the example of Salesforce when I go and when I'm talking to an AE and I say hey it would be great if we could coell together one of the first things they're going to do is go on the App exchange and check and see if I'm actually listed and see if I'm a real partner right and
if I'm not then there's not a whole lot of interest in them working with me uh so yeah setting that Foundation uh is pretty is pretty critical um the next thing is being very very clear about your ICP and finding ways to correctly and effectively express that to your partner um I I think a lot of people are scared of saying something like oh you know we focus on manufacturing finserve and high-tech right and then being scared that that's going to cut off other Industries but it's actually the o
pposite effect because when you're able to really correctly Express how your solution is perfect in a particular use case or industry then it empowers your partner to more easily identify opportunities for you if you rest super vague all the time they're not going to be able to do anything for you right they're not going to have that trigger in mind so what I always try to do is come up with very key examples of how for example they can find an opportunity for toppo like when does it come come i
nto place and when should they recommend us um and so that helps more deals flow in even though I'm actually being more specific and that's actually a great way of doing it because taking the example of Salesforce they segment their AES into industry verticals so why why try and cover everything whereas you can make it super super n Niche and they know exactly what that industry needs exactly and when you're getting started with Salesforce as a partner it's really really important to remember th
at I mean it's such it's a massive company right it's a massive ecosystem so don't be afraid to say you know what I'm going to focus on just SMB or I'm going to focus on just everybody in the insurance vertical right that's going to make you more effective it's going to create Buzz internally among those AES and so then when an AE says hey you know do you know a digital sales room that's really great for mid-market Siz companies right then somebody's going to recommend toppo because they have th
at previous experience with us and they can speak for us internally so yeah creating that Echo effect that's what I always talk about creating the echo effect with your partners is really really important and if you can translate that into other uh activities in your marketing mix so every event that you do every bit of collateral is hyper focused on those those niches it just reinforces that message every single time doesn't it and yeah and that can be shared Partners to use and share around as
well yeah exactly I mean the more again like the more specific you can be in your message the better that they can engage Eng with it because you're meeting them uh like in a space of shared understanding I think we can maybe put it that way you know it's going to speak more to them because that's who they're selling to every day that's the language that they're using um if I share with a Salesforce a a one pager about the I don't know about the fintech sector and they working on media right it
might not really work for them and for their clients and what they're seeing every day so yeah always meeting them where they are yeah yeah so how are you uh kind of reinforcing these relationships and Partnerships is it is it just a case of uh meeting up messaging saying hey this is this is our positioning this is our product this is why we're great um and how do you how how do you kind of reinforce that you know we're here top of here where exist how do you keep them top in mind yeah so I mea
n there's there's two ways right because there's there's the bottom up and then the top down approach and ideally you're going to be doing both so by bottom up what I mean is for example what we do is every time I find an opportunity where Salesforce is involved I'm going to message the A and say hey Bob uh I saw that you know we're working on a deal with one of your clients I'd love to take some time with you to see like how maybe we can sync right to get you that ACV get you that rev share bef
ore the end of the year here's what I think you would touch from that deal if we sign what do you think about taking 15 minutes to do it right so that's what I do then I'll sit down with the AE talk with them explain to them the deal but also take the time to pitch to them toppo and show them what we do and then say by the way you know it'd be great if you have any other clients uh or prospects who you think could benefit from a solution like this and if you want we can even take another 15 minu
tes a few weeks down the road really go through and better understand you know who we can coell to right and so that normally really hooks them in it gets them really engaged uh from the outset especially because they see the immediate benefit which is that Revenue sharing and then from there what I always try to do as a Pam is keep them updated on the sales cycle so saying hey you know like thanks first of all thank you thank you for the introduction that you did for me thank you for the the re
commendation right it went a long way always saying thank you is nice then updating them how did the demo go what are our next steps it's these little things you know that they really appreciate because they feel like then they're not left in the dark um so yeah so that's that's the bottom up approach and then from top down you know this is where we're going to be engaging more with Salesforce leadership maybe we're talking more about different marketing events things like that and that's also e
qually important so being present at events like dreamforce or the World Tour or things like a partner day at Salesforce and I know those things can be very very expensive it's not sometimes possible for everybody to be involved but you can always find different ways to hack it right so um like a popular one is yeah you know I go as an attendee right set some time apart to organize a coffee right that costs very little or you know if you do have like let's say you have maybe like a two to three
5K budget something like that but you can't go the whole 20K that is a world tour you can always organize like a cocktail for example or a a breakfast beforehand you know to meet up with people right so that way you're meeting with the other people at the event they know that there's something going on and you're really engaging and working with those AES so that's another it's another good thing to think about when we think about like the Cadence um of when we're stepping in and when we're actu
ally interacting with these AES and their and the leadership at Salesforce more from a like a bulk message rather than just individually yeah I right some some great tips there concentrating back on the bottom up approach in N Qui how are you finding out the the AE of the of the prospect is that asking the prospect or sneaky that's the hard one that's the hard one so a lot of people ask me this a lot of people ask me this question and there's so many different ways that you can do it so um um if
you're somebody right who has been working with Salesforce a lot you know that what happens is pretty much around every February they're going to reorganize their accounts right afterwards the a hold these accounts for the entire year so if you're tracking previously who's working with what account and you act so either like you're like me you've been working with them for years and you actually remember it because you're just creepy or you know you actually have it written down you have it you
know stored in your Salesforce in your CRM um um you can always refer back to those notes I think it's super important that partnership professionals have specific fields that are dedicated to them within their CRM where they can store partnership notes to fall back on so that's thing number one the official route is if you're an ISB partner you have a Pam normally you can request that um an introduction from the Pam they'll provide you they'll provide that intro for you and then you write some
thing what they call is a baso email so like an introductory email to your solution explaining what you are what you do um The Rev share that the AE would touch and then the context of the op in question right so that's the official context um The Unofficial route which I also think is good is just asking A's maybe who you already know right so pinging them saying like hey you know maybe somebody you worked with on a previous deal or a friend I don't know and you say Hey you know I'm looking for
the AE who manages this do you know who that is could you put me in contact um and normally they're always willing to help out especially if it's going to be beneficial for a Mutual customer it all come around eventually as well won't it yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah and I mean there's nothing normally i' I've rarely had an experience with an a Salesforce who does not want to talk to me about co-selling normally they're always pretty interested in it because the deal is pretty good for them right
they get 15% um of the annual revenue um and all that they need to do is kind of help facilitate conversation and be there to support if needed so how much do you see as rev share as a as a motivator for a for example um and like you know to to play Devil's Advocate some extent if I was an a there could be an element of me thinking I don't want this isv app getting involved because that's taken away from the Salesforce pot if the customer kind of bundles into one sure sure yeah you know it's a
good point and um what I mean what I would say to that is Rev share is important but it's not everything right so um I think it's important I think it's important to be an official isv partner for other reasons other than rev sharing right there's also things around security for example ease of use being able to work with the same um SI for example all of that are benefits of working with an isv partner so there's a certain level of trust there um aside from the revenue sharing I think other thi
ngs that are important to consider is how does your tool for example help a Salesforce AE sell more Salesforce so for example if they are going to position Topo does that mean that they could potentially also position something like slack or like cpq right which we can also work with um so that's just one example when I was at or like a good one for telepon right is okay if they are on sales Cloud today maybe with the phone they can also position something on service Cloud right that's a really
common one I think for CTI um so yeah that's super important to consider and then the third thing is really about um trust and accountability right so the better you are as a Pam like I said doing those follow-ups keeping them up to dat on what's happening with an opportunity providing them with the resources maybe that they need so things like um uh contracts or even just like videos different like marketing materials right the more they're going to be eager to work with you because they know t
hat they can trust you in the deal and so rather than pushing maybe a tool because Salesforce has so many tools right so many solutions so maybe rather than pushing one that's homegrown that can be more of a difficult sale they're going to work with a partner who they trust and who they know can get the job done yeah I me that makes perfect sense actually um so we've discussed all the The Rosy elements of of Partnerships um what are some of the key challenges uh you've encountered countering uh
yeah there can be I mean there's a lot that you can come up with um as an isv I think too because I was thinking about this question and I think a lot of it has to do with um I think let's say like you know as Salesforce there's different stages of Partnerships and I think there's different pains that come off at each stage so for example with what I just went through with Topo we went through the security review at Salesforce in order to be listed on the app exchange so it's a super important r
equirement where Salesforce is having a third party actually test your solution to make sure it's super super secure and functioning with Salesforce um in the most effective way possible and it takes a really long time it takes a really long time and the way they manage that process is it goes to an external party they check it they find something that they want to fix they send it back to you you fix it you send it back and then they start all over again right so it's not like they're going to
check the entire solution from A to Z and then tell you okay you need to fix all of these things they do it one by one which is why it's it's it's a pretty painful process um so yeah that's probably more of a a product thing right that you're going to experience maybe in the beginning I think as you grow uh a pain that's probably going to come across is how do I get in front of these AES when is the when is the right time to do so and the secret is that there's really never a good time so it's n
ever a good time to talk to an AE either it's the end of the month or it's the end of their quarter or they're on vacation or you're on vacation somebody's on paternity leave right something happens um and we can't talk uh so the main thing is just it's it's about being consistent being there um also having a lot of and I think this is really important for Partnerships people having a lot of empathy in your job saying okay you know I know that this is maybe what the situation is for them right n
ow maybe it's not the best time for me to harass them you know maybe it's uh good for me to reach out you know in two weeks or your next month whatever it is I think another let's say Pro tip is to keep in mind the way people like to communicate so I have some a who really prefer talking to me on slack I have others who prefer email others who prefer calling and I always tried to respect that when I was working with them and a part of the reason was because obviously it made the relationship bet
ter but also it meant that I was getting responses from them much quicker so y so what what I'm learning here is that a lot of the the the power that uh you can um the I'll start well what I'm learning here is uh the importance of holding a lot of information in your head just like knowing these nuances of what each a likes and their channels and things like that I mean that that's that's probably an underappreciated skill yeah in your head or in your CRM right like you can write these notes dow
n you know I mean not to not to do like an ad for Salesforce but you can you can write these things down you can store them somewhere um I know uh what I used to do to what was very helpful was we mapped right the entire Salesforce org uh so I understood like okay within the SMB high-tech team I have met within the past week five out of six AES and their relationship is rated you know from like very good to very bad right but there you I can add you know hey this person really prefers to be call
ed or this person always uses WhatsApp right there's certain things that you can also write down to remember of course yeah yeah brilliant um now obviously Salesforce isn't toppo's uh only kind of partner Channel um but talk to me a little bit about what you see as the importance of building a specific strategy for a specific partnership um because you know obviously one thing doesn't work for everything yeah exactly no I mean you're completely right Partnerships are not rip and replace uh so yo
u need to like I said before it's about kind kind of empathy understanding for your partner for their context and where they are and that can even boil down to things like language right like even the language that Salesforce uses is going to be different than the language that they use at HubSpot right so being aware of that when you're working with them as a partner is super important leads contacts opportunities exactly example exactly exactly and so when if you go to you know a Salesforce pe
rson and you talk about the importance of creating a ticket it's not going to speak to them quite as much right so being aware of yourself how you're positioning your tool how you're positioning what you're doing is really critical um I would say also what's important with that is um the strategy for how we sell and I think this is really what set Salesforce apart as a partner in terms of everything that they do with the planning around selling um so they're going to be looking at things a year
out right they saying okay I think next year two years from now I'm going to position par do or service Cloud right so understanding the length of time that it can take in order to effectively sell with your partner is really critical to evaluating its success because for example uh a partner that can be let's say more inbound quick win oriented like HubSpot you can see uh a return on that much quicker something like Salesforce is going to take a little bit more time it's a little bit of a heavi
er lift MH absolutely and do you see a difference in the the effectiveness of partnership Marketing in terms of size of of customer like if it's just a five seat deal how much of an influences is partner marketing within that so are you asking is partnership marketing still influential for small deals or are you asking can partnership marketing make small deals larger or both probably the the first the first yeah I mean um I would say it's still really important even though it can be important i
n different ways right like I'm thinking of a million different scenarios that a small opportunity could come in thanks to partnership marketing so um like for example when that I had recently there was a very very there's a very large company in France but they had one team that was struggling uh with their tool and the AE knew me well he knew toppo and so he came to me and he said look it's not the entire company it's just this team but I saw you know the presentation the one page or the video
that you previously shared with me and I thought that you could be a great fit so can I put you in contact right so that's that's an example right of getting into maybe a larger account that then you can later expand into partnership marketing can be particularly effective at that because you're sharing these these documents that that AE can keep for a very long time and pull out when they need it um the second thing if we're talking more about like velocity deals what's good about velocity is
when it happens um on mess you know you want to get a lot of velocity all the time if you just got like one or two velocity deals here and there that's not so amazing um and this is why partner marketplaces are particularly effective right because you're in a space where you're going to speak specifically to Salesforce users on the app exchange so they're going to come in they're going to say you know I'm looking for a digital sales room they're going to find too and they're going to be able to
install it and start using it right away so that's um that's a certain level uh of visibility and an offering that you just can't necessarily provide on a website or on Google in the way that you can on a partner Marketplace of course and actually that brings me on to the question of uh attribution if you're if you're running um marketing events of your own um but the kind of route to it is through the app exchange obviously at the final how are you measuring the impact of your marketing versus
salesforce's I guess mkting yeah it's it's a really good question I'm laughing because attribution is such a pain point in Partnerships right it's the I think every single Partnerships person has to be like laughing right now but you know thankfully at toppo we're not necessarily at that stage yet where we're super concerned about okay how is this being divided we're a little bit too too young for that even though I've had had that experience before um what I would say when it comes to attributi
on is obviously having the infrastructure in place to properly track your leads is really really important um and then setting very clear rules and guidelines that are expressed that you're very transparent about um is key I think a lot of the times what can be difficult is that certain people think one thing other people think another there's no clear rule or guideline that's actually decided and then people argue about it right which is not great um so yeah I don't know if I fully answered you
r question there I don't know if there's anything you want me to go more in on um no I mean don't think there is a golden bullet answer to this this problem is it but I mean I wish yeah I wish there was I mean cuz like there's I mean there there's multiple ways that you can look at it right you can say you can take on a multi-touch Model right and you can say something along the lines of okay well if exactly like influence if it's if it's this journey versus that Journey you know then you know t
he Partnerships team is weighted 10% or you know 15 whatever it is you know um you can also to evaluate and this is really important in Partnerships in general is you know what are the kpis that you're actually going to follow for your team what are their actual objectives we have some partnership teams today who are purely centered around the actual utilization of the app right or of the integration right so that's very much use whereas we have others who are focused on pipe and we have others
that are focused on closed one uh AR or Mr whatever it is um so yeah just understanding the impact of those decisions right and how that influences the way your pams are going to behave because if it's going to be very pipe heavy then what that means is that your Pam is not going to be incentivized to actually work with Partners to drive closing if they're only utilization focused then what that means is you don't really care necessarily how new sales are doing that's not necessarily your top pr
iority you're going to be more focused on customer success customer retention um so yeah I think uh establishing the kpis is having a good structure clearly expressing whatever the decisions you you make strategically are making sure that they're Fair making sure that they're consistent is the best way to go because like you said there is no Silver Bullet that's going to solve everything and make absolutely everybody happy unfortunately yeah and if and if there was that would be an extremely val
uable piece of marketing software yes I would sell that right away um Sarah this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation um is there one piece of advice you could give to another or other marketing leaders out there on on the on their isv Journey whatever stage they're at oh the okay okay okay okay um my best piece of advice oh I didn't think of this one uh hold on my best piece of advice um I would say probably my best to to partner marketer specifically or to pams because I would say i
t' be a little bit different uh okay let's do partner marketers partner marketers okay so partner marketers my best piece of advice um would be to how do I express this law okay my best piece of advice is with partner marketers for them to put um the needs the interests of their partner at the core of what they're doing right while protecting their company right so this is holding those two things in balance at all times is probably the best and the most important thing you can do because if you
manage to nail that then that means that you have a really effective um co-selling message that your salespeople can unite around and that they can use to then collaborate well and coell um so keeping that really in mind um with everything that you produce and everything that you you do how is this going to be looked at for example by a Salesforce AE by a Salesforce customer by a Salesforce Prospect when I am a Salesforce partner right and not just how does this work for me how does this work f
or my company only y brilliant thank you very much Sarah and uh before we go um I hoping that the audience have got quite peaked interest about what Topo is and what it can do so um is there a an an offer you like to share for the audience yes so if you come through our Affiliated link with the podcast then you will get uh 15% off uh of your offer with toppo so be sure to reach out to us uh and lovely sales people brilliant thank you very much Sarah thank you for joining it's been an honor thank
you thank [Music] you [Music]
Comments