Terry Hedden (00:00)
Boy, am I excited to share today’s podcast with you. We have the amazingly talented and knowledgeable Michelle McBain on, and she is going to share with you her approach to building world-class channel programs. She’s been a channel chief for a long time in organizations, both large and small, and she has built a methodology where she really listens and learns and then systematically attacks the weak links in her channel program to produce producing partners. So if you want to build a world-class channel program, something that’s going to stand the test of time and achieve the goals that your organization has for you, watch this.
Hello, my name is Terry Heddne, CEO of Marketopia. Welcome to the Grow Limitless podcast. You may know of Marketopia as a company that helps MSPs grow, and we certainly do that at scale and have for over 12 years. what many don’t know is that we also help vendors. We help vendors selling to and through the channel. In fact, it’s a bit about half of our business over time. And I’m really excited today to really deep dive into that. We’ve got the one, the only, the infamous Michelle McBain on the line today. Welcome, Michelle. Thank you for joining us today.
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (01:23)
Thank you, Terry. And I’ve really enjoyed always being a part of what you and Andra have built at Marketopia. Throughout my career, you guys have really helped me from a vendor perspective as well. So I’m looking forward to our conversation.
Terry Hedden (01:35)
Awesome. Thank you for that. Thank you. Michelle has moved into a new role and I’m really excited to hear about it. She’s the global channel chief and vice president of channel sales at Corio. Michelle, tell us a little about Corio. What do you guys do and what kind of partners are perfect for you?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (01:52)
Well, it’s actually Corero. And the reason I say that is because it’s probably the most hidden gem that you’ve never heard of, but that every MSP and partner should know about. So Corero Network Security has been around for over a decade, and they really do protect what matters most in today’s world, which is availability. So we specialize in real-time DDoS protection. That’s the techs and mitigates at-tax instantly and right at the edge. So businesses stay online, performance is unharmed and we are always trusted with our customers. So unlike reactive or cloud only approaches, we’ve heard about some of those happening recently going down, we’re going to not only stop your attacks in seconds, not minutes, but have a deep visibility and automated response. So I’m really excited about what we’re doing in the cybersecurity space, very disruptive, very partner and customer friendly and really ⁓ very protective of what matters most to those we work with.
Terry Hedden (02:53)
Awesome. Sounds like a great technology. I’m not the techie guy. I can talk about it, but I’m not the engineer. So I’m not going to dive into what you guys do and how you do it. But what I am going to dive into, Michelle, is one thing that I think that you really have an amazing perspective on, which is how to build a channel program that actually works, that actually generates sales and pulls up small MSPs and helps them perform and is a win-win for everybody, not just for the vendor trying to sell more product, but also for the reseller that are trying to grow. So I’m really excited to kind of explore that with you. ⁓ And I know you’ve got a background working in some really large organizations as well as some smaller ones. So you just have a really valuable perspective that I can’t wait to learn about. So why don’t we kind of kick off with that, Michelle. ⁓ From your perspective, what changed in the channel since you got into that sort channel chief, channel marketing, channel sales type role? How has the market changed and how has your approach to partnering with MSPs changed?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (03:55)
Yeah, no, for anyone who doesn’t know me, I’ll give a little background about who I am and then take you down on this journey with me because it’s been a very interesting ride. So I started in the channel about 21 years ago. I began my career as an engineer at Cisco and I pivoted into sales and engineering. spent about 14 years at Cisco in two different stints. Most recently leading their mission for managed service providers and managed service security providers, ⁓ re-inditing a partner program for them, our partner advisory councils with them, and how we enable and scale with them. And then beyond that, I went to work for SonicWall as their global channel chief, and I handled a lot of what we call reimagining that program as well and the company overall. We transitioned from what most people would know as a firewall vendor into a partner-friendly ⁓ community that would help scale with two acquisitions that we did for ZTNA and MDR, XDR, and SOC as a service. And so there were different motions we were working through. There were different partners we were talking through. We moved from the traditional reseller or VARS into managed service providers and MSSPs into other alliances and consultative sellers and into a more diverse range of partners. in both of those worlds, I had to reimagine our partner program. Most recently, I was actually advising a really exciting cybersecurity startup out of Tel Aviv, Israel called Red Access doing browser security. So coming into this space, coming into America, what does a program look like? Who are the movers and shakers? How do I build it? And then now sitting at Carrero as their global VP of channels, Carrero publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange, works with huge alliance partners like HPE, Akamai.
⁓ GTT, et cetera. But how do we take what they’ve done and go from good to great? And where that really lies for all of it is with the partners. We are nothing without our partners because we have to help figure out what’s in it for them. Everybody sells a widget and it must be that much faster or that much quicker or that much more shinier. But at the end of the day, are we easy to do business with? Are we helping make them more profitable?
Are we supporting them through co-selling, co-marketing, and co-innovating with our partners by our side? And that is a mutual dance. It’s sort of like marriage. You have to both be vested in one another. You have to be trustworthy and honest with each other. And you have to be committed to the mutual success to elevate with each other. And that’s where it takes a lot of listening, pausing, and understanding, you know, what’s working and what’s not.
And sometimes that’s uncomfortable. A lot of vendors don’t like to get out of what I call the ivory tower to talk on the front lines with partners. But if you don’t know the elephants in the room, then there’s a lot of choice in the market. And they don’t have to work with us. They choose to work with us because we have a mutual respect for one another and we have listened and understood each other and we have a desire to help one another grow.
Terry Hedden (07:18)
Love that. And when you said widget, guess it kind of made me smile because I wish every vendor kind of had that perspective. know, everyone it’s natural, right? You’re in a company and you think your company is great and you have great products and that’s true. And, and, and, no disrespect to anyone who builds amazing products. But at the end of the day, the difference between different products in the market is often much smaller, especially to the untrained eye. In other words, as a customer or a partner, the difference between you and your next closest peer is probably a lot smaller than you may appreciate. And that kind of brings it to like the decision about who to go to has to do with other things like the first to be introduced to you maybe is something, but I believe over time, the winner in markets that are competitive is the company who’s the best partner. You know, it’s not the best product. ⁓And it’s a lot easier to partner, to be an amazing partner that is to have an amazing product. So it always kind of blew my mind. Have you found that too, that it’s almost easier to get some tech companies to invest in more in the product and not in the partnership? Or have you been blessed with organizations that say we get it? We understand. Let’s be the best partner we can be.
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (08:27)
Well, I think it’s a bit of both, right? I mean, a lot of times you have incredible product leaders that work on a mission to develop quality products that meet and exceed expectations of customers. Selling a quality product, if you’re a seller out there, you know how important that is. If it doesn’t break, if you never get fired for buying them, like that’s a good problem to have. However, oftentimes I’ve seen that people build things in silos without the customers or partners having a seat at the table.
And by that I mean, I’m very intentional about outside in listening, whether it’s a partner advisory council or a technical advisory council. So when I built the programs that I built, we had meetings quarterly, sometimes monthly with our partners. We had them really tell us what’s working, what’s not, what they would like to see different. We launched total partner experience surveys, not just on the channel, but on the product, on sales and marketing on customer support and retention because you can get a bunch of partners on. But if you have a leaky funnel, if you don’t onboard and enable them, if you don’t help handhold them to get up and running quickly and train their teams to be an extension of your family, then they might turn. And then you have a bigger problem because you’re putting people in and losing them as fast as you’re putting them in. So it’s all about the life cycle of the partner not just the attraction and the retention, but also not just celebrating the shiny new or the 80-20 rule, like 80 % of profits is typically driven by your top 20 partners. That’s great. I think that’s really important. But what about the layer below that? Are you talking to them? Do you understand their care abouts? Have we invested in their needs? Because past history is not an indicator of future opportunity. You might have a gem, a diamond in the rough that is in your partner portfolio today or in your target prospects that you haven’t truly listened to and understood and helped get to where they need to be. And with that choice comes great responsibility. We both need to make sure that they have fast response times, if they have technical support cases, that they have somebody that is committed to them.
Oftentimes I’ve seen a tale of two cities. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It’s the luck of the draw. And you know this, I’m sure being a business owner yourself, your team that is committed to those customers, they’re the ones that are going to exceed expectations. And you see it in the proof of results because they are more committed, more dedicated. They’re more communicative. They have daily syncs, weekly syncs, monthly syncs, quarterly syncs. They have a personal relationship with them. And at the end of the day, people buy from people they know, like, and trust. That never changed. You know, we might be more automated, we might be more AI-intuned, but do you have a relationship? That’s key.
Terry Hedden (11:27)
I love that. And Michelle, the more you get to know partners, do you see like common themes or threads through them about what’s keeping them from achieving the sales goals they had for the products and services you were working with? Is there any commonality between them or is it really, really all over the place in terms of, you know, every partner’s unique and their problems?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (11:50)
I would say every partner is unique, however, there is a theme, right? There’s ⁓ a common flow where you see information overload. I’ll use cybersecurity as an example. There is a point where there’s 6,500 cybersecurity vendors out there today. That’s a lot of noise and a lot of clutter. That’s just one piece of their stack. So I think the biggest complication that I see from partners is their stack of solutions is over complicated. They have a lot of vendors that they have to manage and work with. They don’t always get the same seat at the table across the board. And then it becomes a complexity to how do I manage, especially smaller partners, how do they manage being resource restrictive or time sensitive, this big grouping that I have in my solution stack. And you may need all those things, but where do I maybe consider partnering or offloading that back or with the vendor? Can they come do it with me? Can they do it for me? Is there somebody I should outsource some of this to? And I think that is the biggest pain point that I see, especially, and you would probably see this, I’m sure at a company like Marketopia, you might be a great technician who opened up your own company and you became a robust ⁓ seller because of the trust you have with the technology. But maybe you’re not really skilled up on the sales side, or maybe you’re not skilled up on the marketing side. That’s always a pain point I see for a lot of partners, especially MSPs, where the bigger you are, you have a vast team. have CMOs, you have enablement, you have products, but the smaller you are, or the mid-sized you are, you don’t have all these resources. And this is where it comes up to vendors to say, what is in it for you, what do you need? What gaps can you solve? And some of those things I’ve worked with, like with companies like Marketopia or Vendasta or others where I’ve said, okay, ⁓ you’re gonna get MDF dollars. And the utilization of those dollars for market development funds is really low. Why? I have to understand the root cause. I have 100 % if you don’t use it, we lose it. And I want you to grow. I want you to market. I want you to do events. But at the end of the day, we have 8 % utilization. That’s staggering. I couldn’t understand why. So I had to dissect the typical, ⁓ use this example, Cisco partner is more enterprise. And then we were going into a new route to market. So the needs of a typical partner were very different than the needs of an SMB partner. So the same functionality didn’t apply. So thinking outside the box to…
Do you need help with your SEO, your website? You’re a local company and you need to get in touch with more people. How is your social media, your social selling doing? How is your ability to have a campaign in a box where you have one of our speakers come out and do a threat report and insight and intel with your demographic? These are the things that I think understanding what they need, not just in product, but in their overall business can help accelerate the motion that you do together.
Terry Hedden (15:11)
So sounds to me like what you’re saying is the operational maturity of ⁓ resellers are different based on size and revenue and that type of thing, which makes sense. And it sounds like you’re saying that the biggest Delta may be the symptom and the cause. In other words, if they’re not very good at lead gen, they’re not really good at social selling and doing the activities that generate revenue, they’re not going to obviously be big, which means they’re not going to have the talent necessary to get things going.
Do you see that as sort of a critical success factor for a vendor that wants to succeed in the channel is to help the partners in the front end of the business with marketing, lead gen sales, that type of thing? Is that kind of a common theme, I guess you could say?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (15:52)
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll use, for example, what we do at Carrero as an example, we work with some very large enterprise partners as well and enterprise alliances, but DDoS may not be what they do 100 % of the time, right? It may be a small bit of what they do in their vast level of portfolio. So for us, that’s where we become the niche specialist. And by the way, like I’m very excited. I just came off the tail end of sales kickoff three weeks ago.
And there’s a completely new portfolio that we’re putting together of products and solutions, which is very exciting. I’m building out a new program. We have new leadership. We have new marketing, all of that to be said, we’re thinking with our partners in mind, what are the gaps that we have? This is not maybe their focus area. How do we help them ramp, have these account mapping conversations, have these customer sourced initiatives, have these marketing deliverables that will help them. And that scales all people of all sizes. It’s not niche to one particular group, but if this isn’t a main focus for your company, but it’s needed and obligatory part of your technology stack of solutions, how do you offload some of that to us? And that’s where I think that more vendors can raise their hand and help partners by understanding where their gaps may or may not be.
Terry Hedden (17:13)
I love that. And when you say fill in the gaps and helping their partners and all that, start on that front end for me. If you said sort of marketing, branding, you had lead generation, you had sales, all that happens before someone sells something, which of course no one’s going to buy that product until they sell something. let’s focus on that front end. What do you think best practice looks like? And how much does the vendor’s budget play into that? And guess what have you seen where…
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (17:42)
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I like to say no matter what company of any size, I have caviar tastes and tuna fish budgets. It is a one funny thing. You think that the biggest companies in the world, the smallest companies in the world you have to do a lot with not enough is really where it comes down to. And you’re always trying to be creative. There’s the need to have, there’s the nice to have, and there’s the aspirational goals. In building a program, there’s a hundred pieces to that program.
There’s a lot that goes into it, right? From enablement to development to rebates and SPFs to NFRs to your programmatic, to your market development funds, to all of that, right? And there’s so many layers and nuances that go into that. And then you have to set, do I need them all at once? Probably not, but there’s some non-negotiables to build a partner program. need some standard level of, I need to at least meet and exceed hopefully where my competitors are in this space, right? So that’s step one from my role and what I think about, what keeps me up at night. And then the second piece of that is really, I need to understand obviously from my partners that I work with, who is their ideal customer profile? Who are they working with and to, and that persona, like I need to figure out, and I’ll look at a company like Carrero as an example.
We shined with telco service providers, tier one, tier two telcos. We have a huge opportunity with enterprise partners, a huge opportunity with managed service provider and MSSPs. We haven’t dived deep enough in those routes. So that looks at how do I fish where the fish are and create brand awareness for us and for them to know our capabilities and how we could support them? How do I look at the events that they go to? ⁓
In the MSP space alone, there’s 350 events a year. That’s cost prohibitive and time consuming and overwhelming for anyone. So how do I scale that in the OEM Alliance space? How do I show up and support my Alliance partners in ⁓ the area of reseller and VARs, looking at the distribution communities, looking at our global theater because we have a global footprint. How do I create a heat map of where we are really strong and where we have opportunities to go. And I think about all that from my lens. And then I think about my partners. Are they supporting mid-size clinics in Metro New York City? Are they a national partner? Are they in US and Canada? Are they international? What is their scale and scope? What industries and verticals and segments are they hyper-focused on? And what sort of customer testimonials are they gonna look for?
So they have a healthcare company or a financial bank. What can I do to help make them successful? And what case studies do I have that can show them proof of success together to help them close that opportunity? Right? So these are the things that I think partners need to demand of their vendors and say, I need, like IDC had this very interesting statistic, which you’ll appreciate as a lead generating company. IDC said that.
VPs and CEOs look for up to 85, 8 to 10 pieces of content before they even talk to a salesperson. What does that include? White papers, brochures, eBooks, at a glance, webinars, podcasts, all of these little touch points. And I say, how do you become omnipresent? Vendors are thinking this, partners are thinking this. There’s competition in their space as well. How do we align to make sure that when a customer thinks about them, they think about them and their solution and therefore us and our relationship. And that’s how you have to kind of go through this like 10,000 foot in the air look and then drill in deeper to really being hyper-focused. Do you sell all things to all people in all the world? Well, that’s probably a problem. You really should know where your sweet spots are and be a little bit laser focused and intentional.
You know, you may have only sold to one demographic. That’s not an indicator, again, of future possibilities, but how do you land and expand in this space successfully? And you have to do that with bit of intentionality and support helps.
Terry Hedden (22:09)
You know, something you just said is really insightful to me. ⁓ So, so I feel like vendors almost pick between two strategies when it comes to the front end. They’re either big picture, you know, Hey, we need to have an MDF program. We need to have deal red. We need to have, ⁓ you know, something to train the partner, maybe something to help the partner and then something maybe to give the partner like, like leads, just give them leads or something like that. And then you, and those partners tend to be the ones that have well-funded kind of programs. And then you have the lower end, ⁓ I guess, smaller things like, hey, I want to sell this product to a dentist. Do you have a case study of a dentist that uses this product? And I feel like the smaller partners, the smaller vendors almost do a better job at that. They’re focused on the giving helpers, maybe assets, maybe some marketing campaigns, email, whatever. ⁓ And maybe they’re not doing the top, but…
What you’re saying right now, it sounds like you’re saying that if you really want to create a more evolved channel program, you need to focus on both. You need to follow that deal from, let’s get the customer, get the reseller attracted to us by having the big picture stuff like DealReg or MDF. But then let’s not forget about that last mile, that proposal. What are we going to give the partner to give with the proposal to reinforce the value or to reinforce the perceived ⁓
Applicability of our solution to the person they’re talking to That’s pretty darn cool. Michelle. I’ve never really heard a channel Chief kind of talking like that. In other words, they’re either in the clouds They’re in the weeds, but you’re kind of trying to be both and I think that’s that’s pretty awesome Have you I guess how deep how far do you go with that? I mean, do you say okay? ⁓ Do you almost like act as if you’re the MSP salesperson and start thinking through, okay, what does that salesperson need? What does the marketer need? Like everything, you know, they get a tchotchke that they give the customer? Do you really think about it at that level? Or do you try to kind of pull back and do more, you know, overall arching type stuff?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (24:23)
You know, honestly, it depends on the motion and the need at the time and the company and their maturity at the time. And I’ll use this role I’m in right now. I also own field events and event marketing at this moment. So I’m working very closely with the, with the corporate marketing team in terms of assets. What’s our mission vision, right? Like how would we describe that to customers? And then, then I take that and I drive it deeper and say,
How would we describe that to our partners, right, specifically? And then I think it step further and say, how do our partners communicate that to their customers? And I think that motion has to always be kind of a thought in your work around. And you have to start with the big picture. You have to start with, you know, what’s our why, the Simon Sinek question, and then how do you deliver that accordingly? And I think part of that is not having the assumptions. That’s why the listening is so key.
That’s why advisory councils or surveys are so important. One of the things I think was the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard was somebody was conducting a customer success QBR. And I said, what was the most interesting thing you learned? And he said, not all our customers are happy with us. Even the ones we thought were. That’s a really important factor. I mentioned choice earlier, I mentioned the ability. So you have two types of customers and I’m sure you do as well. You have the loud.
Squeaky Wheel gets the Greece customers that say, I’m not happy. Give me what I need. I need X, Y, and Z. And they specifically ask you. And you say, okay, like I got it. Heard you loud and clear and you set realistic expectations. We can do this. You should set realistic expectations. We’ll put this in our roadmap. We’ll talk to this team about it. We’re going to put this in our, in our vision. We may redirect some things, but then you have the customers that say, I’m not happy. I’m just going to leave.
I don’t care. And you’ll see a reduce in sales with them. You’ll see a lack of renewals with them. You’ll see kind of the movement in that direction and to the point where they leave. And then you say to your team, and if you’re very removed, which is the problem with being on the front lines versus being in leadership, you say, hey, know, Joe and Sally, you are responsible for this account, using their names as an example. What happened here? Was there a merger and acquisition?
Did they retire? Have they left us for somebody else? And you, you will really get a lot of from that, how well or don’t well they know their customer, right? And this is when I talk about the tale of two cities and the idea of QBRs is really important to me. And maybe you tier that to the point where how many, if this is a key strategic partner of yours, you should be doing quarterly, least two virtual, two in person every year.
If it’s maybe the second tier, then you should be meeting them at least once a year in person. And if it’s a third tier, then you can do these virtually just to scale your business. This is depending on how many partners you have, right? Or customers you have. But you have to understand where their heads at and not have the assumption that everything’s great and they’re completely happy and that you’ve met all their needs. Because the truth is nobody’s perfect. We’re all a work in process human beings and companies alike. So there’s no harm in saying, you know, I’m happy, but I would like X, Y, Z. And if you have that true level of trust and transparency, then you’re not worried about the elephant in the room, which is that they’re not completely satisfied because maybe their needs as a business have changed. Maybe they’re more concerned with AI and AI threats now than they were historically. Maybe they’re more focused in regulation and compliance than they were historically. Maybe they’ve pivoted and you married to a Canadian have to skate to where the puck is going as the great one says, and are you marrying where you’re headed as a company? And do they know that? Do they understand the value that you present? So I mentioned we have a completely new product portfolio. How many of our sales teams have picked up the phone and had that conversation with their partners and how many of our partners are able to articulate that to their customers and where do they need our help. That’s the thing.
Terry Hedden (28:49)
Michelle, you know, when you talk, the thoughts keep coming to my mind about how do you get the information that you need to execute like that. When you, you know, a lot of vendors have strategic partner, advisory council, whatever you want to call it, right? They get their partners in a room to talk to them, but so many of them seem to focus on the partners that are succeeding and the best partners. And asking your top 25 partners what you can do better is not going to make the bottom 25 become the top 25. How do you build that advisory council that gives you the ability to ask those questions and listen to that tough feedback and get a cross section? know, new partners, old partners, big partners, small partners, succeeding partners, failing partners. You know, how do you get that? How do you ensure that the voices of those of each segment are heard and that their problems are solved versus the natural inclination of giving your best partner, your best provider, what they need to get even better.
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (29:52)
Right. Spot on. I could not agree more and I’m in violent agreement. You’ll see me moving my head. So my first day on the job at Sonic Wall, a good friend of mine who’s a CRO of a partner comes up to me and says, Hey, congratulations. I’m so excited for your new role. I’m like, that’s awesome. Thank you. goes, I’m a Sonic Wall partner. That’s great. We’re leaving you to go to XYZ. Whoa. It’s my first day on the job. Can we talk about this? And in that moment, I had to seek to understand. A, I had the relationship so he was honest and transparent. Probably wouldn’t have said that to somebody else that they didn’t have a relationship with. So that’s an advantage, but again, that’s seeking to understand and having communication between you and your partners. So then I said to him, what’s the problem? What’s the issue? And he said, you know, I think our CEO is here. You should talk to him. So I talked to the CEO, sat down, had a great conversation didn’t even understand all the problems yet because it was literally my first day on the job, but brought in our head of product, brought in our head of customer success, brought in our head of sales, went through this motion, invited him to be a part of our advisory council.
Not only did he not leave us, he joined the council and became our biggest champion within his own company because he helped shape the product and the future of the company. That example could not be more real or true for me because that somebody who was so unhappy, so disgruntled, so frustrated that they just wanted to be heard. And once they were heard, we could take action. We could fix that. You know, I had another person, I’ll give an example. They said, ⁓ I said, how’s our deal-redge process? They said, do you want the real answer or do you want the corporate answer? said, give me the real answer. Why would you waste your time or mine? It’s crappy. ⁓ is it? Okay. Tell me more. Well. It pulls up the screen, we have to do this and this and this isn’t there and that isn’t there and it’s convoluted and it’s very complicated and it’s a hard time. So most of the time I end up doing it for the partners because they don’t have the bandwidth and it’s so complicated. I had that problem solved in two weeks, but only because I knew I had a problem.
You need to have somebody flag a distress symbol or you can’t fix it, which is again why I advise every partner out there listening, we can’t fix what we don’t know or don’t acknowledge. So if there is an issue, you have to beat the drum and we can work together on that. Not everything is fixable. I’ll be completely transparent. I wish it was. Some things are gonna take more time, but we need to be honest and upfront about that. Most people are disenfranchised because you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re gonna do X, Y, Z and you don’t deliver. I’d be much more happy with whoever it is if they told me the truth. That’s the New Yorker in me, right? Just be upfront and then we’ll have a really good relationship.
Terry Hedden (32:50)
Well, to do that though, you have to give them that form and you have to give them that comfort and you have to ask the question. And to your point, you have to be genuine seeking to understand. You’re not just seeking to have the partner know that they talked, but you’re trying to have the partner truly feel like you care enough to listen, learn, and do something about it before they’re going to share. love that. Michelle, I’m curious, know, frame, I want to kind of go back to like making the partner successful. So you have, you have companies like Marketopia out there, right? Who do you know, know, marketing lead generation, we have services that teach people how to do things, do things with people and do things for people. If you, you know, if, you’re, what should vendors do, ⁓ and buy and engage with, with companies that do things that their partners need, like how should vendors engage with companies like us? Like what do you think is best practice?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (33:48)
I think it’s identifying the gaps of where your company falls short. ⁓ So in my past experience, where have I called Marketopia is we have great teams, big teams, conflicting priorities. I need fast turnarounds. I need agility. I need quick response. You don’t always get that in a larger, more bureaucratic company with a lot of conflicting priorities because there’s so much happening at once. And if everything is a priority, nothing’s a priority, right? So we know that. So in order to be more intentional, we have to say, okay, ⁓ ownership matters, right? So if I’m the now VP, can kind of set this tone. But you have a lot of VPs, they may have a lot of different motions. And I look at just, I own event and film marketing along with the channel and channel sales but I also have a counterpart that’s gonna owned ⁓ brand marketing, corporate marketing as it is, right? So nurture campaigns, development, et cetera. Where do we outsource? Where do we build within? Looking at the PMMs or the product marketing, what’s more important is that for those people to focus on how do we take this new product portfolio we’re launching and articulate all the things we can do. And then how do we take the overarching message of what’s in it for our partners and we’re translating that to a sales and marketing motion, if we don’t have enough staff, sometimes you need to outsource that, right? Because hiring up could cost more and be more timely than ⁓ outsourcing some of those things or the low hanging fruit. And your team is really good about ⁓ scaling up quickly to the technology learning and being able to sort of hit the ground running and being an extension of our family in a white labeled sense, which I very much appreciate.
You need like think about anyone being on boarded. I’m just starting at a company. I’m three weeks in. I have a lot to learn, right? Because I want to know enough to be dangerous, but I also have this 20 years experience plus plus in my own like lens, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have unconscious bias that’s built into there.
So I need to learn not only our product, which I really want to learn more about and have, we have wonderful people. So if you’re interested, hit me up and I’ll connect you with those amazing individuals. But beyond that, I want to make sure that I understand the partners and customers we have in their needs. And I’m not foolish enough to think that what their needs are, we have all the capabilities today to meet. We’re going to have to build some of those. We’re going to have to partner with some people to do those. And that’s where we’re going to be successful.
Terry Hedden (36:36)
So it sounds like you kind of have the same approach to an internal team that you did with a partner where you’re seeking to understand where are we good? If you look at all of the things that a partner might need to be successful selling whatever product or service you want them to, to just have an open and honest conversation with yourself and say, what are we good at? What are we great at? And what are we not good at or don’t even do? And then make some decisions about.⁓ you know, do we want to invest what it takes to become great? Do we want to partner with another firm that maybe already is great? Or do we just want to say, we’re not in a game. We’re not going to help you with case studies. We’re not going to help you with, you know, ⁓ putting on a local lunch and learn and deal like just admitting you’re out. It sounds like a really, ⁓ I guess it sounds to me like a very interesting process and one that makes a lot of sense to me.
How do you do that? If you’re coming into an organization as you’re doing right now, or maybe you’re even a channel chief that’s saying, you know what, we’re not hitting our goals, I’m not hitting my goals. What would you do in that 90 day period? Say, you know, we’re starting off the new year here, a lot of us have big goals, SKO just happened, and all of a sudden you feel that pressure of like, okay, we talked about it and we committed to the street, we committed to leadership, now how are we gonna execute?
What would, if I’m a channel chief and I’m kind of looking at myself, how do I do that? What are the things that I would do over that 90 day span so that I can quickly figure out, build by partner, how do I fill the holes? How do I solve my problems as quickly as I can so that I can be to my partners what they need to achieve success?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (38:20)
Yeah, so I’ll tell you what I’m doing. That’s the best I can offer. The first thing is I have to, we’re all driving revenue. I don’t care what anybody says their role in the company is. You can be in operations, you can be in marketing, you can be in channels, you can be in sales. Obviously we know sales is driving revenue. We all collectively are driving revenue. Without a profitable company, you’re not in business. You close the windows, you shut her up. So sales is paramount.
How do you do that is through, again, this understanding of where you’re at right now. So you have to quickly assess, where am I at as a company? That means talking to the pivotal leaders. You can dig deeper as you go. So I’ve set up already meetings with our global theater leaders in Americas, in Namia, in the Middle East, emerging markets. And then I work through customer success. I work with our SOC team. I go down the list of all the people that are pivotal, right? And it’s very…very important questions that differ for them, but what are you measured by? Because your success is my success. We may not have the same goals, but if you’re losing, I’m not helping you. So internally, you all have to be in the same canoe, swimming in the same direction, right? This is bro club in the 5 a.m. and you’re going for the finish line. You need to make sure that you’re all aligned. If I don’t know what their priorities are, I can’t help them achieve them, right? And so I’m an extension.
If I need ambassadors and ⁓ people that will help me champions to me, I need to champion them. That’s true for our partners. That’s true for our customers. That’s true in our personal lives. So if you have the same alignment and understanding, I think then you’re going to be better off. Then you say in very simple words, like, what are your challenges? Like your SWOT analysis, where are strengths, where are weaknesses? What opportunities do we have to do better? Meaning what’s terrible and what are some of the threats? Like we can’t fix this, but this is a big problem. This is a big pain point.
In an ideal world, you could wave a magic wand. What would you fix, right? Budget’s not an issue. Money’s not an issue. And you get people to very quickly say like, we need to understand this. Like don’t make me wait three months to understand where the bodies are buried. I need to know upfront, what do we need to do? And then once you get all of that, and then of course, it’s not just that for me, because I’m leading partners. I need to talk to all our key partners. Luckily for us, we had our alliance partners at this event. We had some of our key strategic partners at our sales kickoff.
I very rarely see that happen. Why? Because we’re talking about a lot of personal information there. We’re talking about how we ended the fiscal year. We’re talking about our goals for the new year. We’re talking about, you know, many different things. This created a very open level of transparency and trust. The partners that were in this room understood that they have a seat at our table. We’re not hiding anything under the kimono. It is completely open for us to say.
This is us in our most vulnerable position saying we want to achieve this with you by our side. Are we in this together? Then you have a commitment for success with transparency and trust. That was a very interesting and I think very well done utilization of their time and ours. So in the first three weeks, I am truly hitting the ground running in terms of assessment. So the first month is that. Now, one, I know what everything is and where we need to move things.
We have to stack rank the priorities. A lot of priorities are going to come out of that. And you have to figure out you can’t do all things at once. It can’t be a peanut butter spread. So now what is the most important thing that’s going to drive revenue and achieve the goals together? And you start moving in that direction. And then that’s where you build it. And I say like Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’re not going to expect instantaneous gratification results, although some people would, but you do have to have the right focus and the right North star. And once you build on that, you continue to drive deeper and through those tiers and figure out where you need to make your changes or investments. And that’s where I’m at. Do we need a new partner program portal? Do we need help with our ⁓ MDF or do we need help with our ⁓ enablement? What does that look like? And as a leader, you have to assess the situation and say, we have enough right now or we need more and how do we achieve that?
Terry Hedden (42:43)
In your experience, Michelle, guess how many of the challenges, you know, you’ve been in a number of organizations. Where are the challenges biggest? Are they in the front end helping them get new customers? Are they in processing of orders? Are they in the product or are they in support? Where do you see that low hanging fruit that can move the needle quickest based on your experience at least?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (43:07)
Yeah, I think the biggest for me, onboarding and enablement is huge, right? So you meet a partner, you’re excited, you invite them to the dance, they want to dance with you. How do you keep them dancing all night long? This motion means that you need to have understanding of anything upfront of where you’re going to achieve. They need to understand.
Your vision, your product portfolio, their technical teams, especially their technical teams have to be up skilled, whether it’s you do to proof of concept, they’ve demoed it in their lab, they trust the product, they’ve kicked the tires. They know what they’re working with. You have to get all those questions, it before you move forward. Because if there’s any sort of hesitation coming from a background where I was in engineering and sales, the engineers, the technical trust it resource. Let’s be all honest with that. Right? So if your technical team feels comfortable and confident, then you’re gonna have a better emotion. Now, the care abouts of the partner leaders or the business leaders may not be the same. They might care more about margin, front end and back end rebates, about market development funds to have some of these initiatives executed, because they need money and they need your help with that. The motions of what is needed is gonna change, which is why I advise on two different councils, a technical council and a partner counsel because they’re two different motions with two different personas that you’re targeting. But that first period, you’re gonna make or break your partnership right off the bat, right? And then you see a fall off for the partners that don’t continue to get like that personal touch or handhold, right? So like you see that in many case studies where there’s like this element of we’re working together, we’re gonna get, we onboard you and then we stop talking to you because you’re a part of company. And then I think about the people that have tenure with us.
How do you celebrate and honor the people that have worked with you for one year, five year, 10 years? And I know we’re talking B2B, but let’s look at B2C for an example. I ordered a ⁓ platinum American Express car, because I’m gonna be doing a lot of traveling and I want to have some food and space in the lounges as I’m going around the world so I’m not just panicked at the gate. So as I look at that, it comes in this beautiful custom silver box that you open up.
Welcome to the family with another beautiful silver case, which you open up with their beautiful card presented in it and a little handbook of pictures of happy people around the world. And I feel like I’m inducted into their ecosystem. How do you as a vendor induct your partners, your customers into your ecosystem? How do you make them feel special, unique, differentiate it from your competition?
This is an important thing that I think more people should spend more time thinking about when we talk about the 10,000 foot in the air. What are some of the little details? Why do people, why do I still own a Peloton and ride it at least a couple of times a week? When I had a stationary bike and I used to hang clothes off of it, there’s a lot of reasons for that, right? And I know Peloton stocks doesn’t always do well, but I’ll tell you for me, there was the gamification. There was the community. There was the celebration. You’re working out with three friends. You won this achievement come back to us, the little emails, right? There’s this callback, there’s this focus, this touch, and it may be automated and it may not be personal, but it feels personal. These are the elements that I think that a lot of people need to think about in terms of the relationship, because it’s not just about the beginning. It’s not just about dating or asking someone to marry you. But if you are married and you don’t talk to your wife or husband for three months or six months or one year, are you still married?
I’m going to guess Andra would say no. And I personally don’t feel like you are in a committed relationship if you don’t have that engagement throughout the year. So how do you, whether it’s marketing newsletters or partner portal updates or ⁓ webinars or, ⁓ you know, sort of that sales team motion, just reaching out and connecting or QBRs, there’s many different ways to have a touch but what does this touch look like and how are you connecting and what is the frequency and cadence and do they feel heard? That piece of it, that lifetime maturity of your partners, I think is the other piece of that where we fall off the wagon and we forget and we’re remiss about, it’s not just about attracting new partners, it’s about driving. We already have successful partnerships. You’ve liked our product. have 98%, in this case, 98 % successful customer retention without churn. I’ve never heard a number like that. Like that’s a staggering statistic. So clearly we’re doing something right. We have a trust, we have a good quality product, we have good relationships. Now how do I upsell, cross-sell with our new stack of solutions into their customer base on something with partners who already know and like and trust us? Don’t forget about, you know, the expression, make new friends, but keep the old one is silver, the other is gold. My childhood poem that I learned.
But you have to nurture both, not just the new people, but keeping that excitement and enthusiasm and connection throughout the relationship.
Terry Hedden (48:24)
That’s interesting. You know, one of the things that time back to earlier comment, said you were talking about MDF and how, how underutilized it is. And basically the downside, if you’re a channel chief to a program, that’s not really working well. late last year, we launched a product called channel growth as a service where we kind of took ownership, shared ownership, obviously, but ownership of that MDF program and said, okay, I, I am going to help you achieve the most qualified sales appointments I possibly can for your partners, right? The ultimate goal of an MDF program is not to make people, you know, give away pizzas to their customers, but it’s actually to get leads. And we did that by going in and truly understand what a good partner looks like, what a good lead looks like. Obviously we have to understand what that, that, ⁓ that success looks like. And then we kind of used our skills in marketing and lead generation and sales to basically get the partners on board doing what it takes to produce the leads at the lowest cost possible. It wasn’t just give the rich richer, know, give the leads to the biggest partner, but it’s how do we lift the lower partners up? How do we produce the most ⁓ producing partners possible given the MDF constraints that we have? ⁓ How does that tie in, I guess, with the natural internal approach for a channel chief? How can companies like Marketopia help a channel chief optimize the ROI of their MDF budget.
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (49:56)
First of all, very intriguing. I’d to learn more about that and how you did that successfully. For me, and thinking back to what we did, it was understanding why are we not utilizing it. So some of it was the process, right? You have to pay up front a lot of times. It’s a big expense. They were worried that if they didn’t meet all the criteria that they weren’t going to get reimbursed on the back end. So there was this sort of disconnect, especially with the smaller partners.
If I have to pay 10 or $20,000 upfront of my hard earned revenue, then how am I going to, you know, OpEx or CapEx this in the backend and figure out if I could reimburse and if you’re going to reimburse me. So a big, a big portion of that, I think is. I had to look at, you know, being creative and not always doing things the way they’ve always been done. That’s probably one of my least favorite things like we work in technology, the only thing in technology that’s constant is change and everyone hates change. So we’re in this society that is perpetually adapting and evolving and yet we defer back to the way things have always been done. So I said, let’s just put all cards on the table. Let’s reassess what do we need to do in order to make our partner successful because we know a finance is not going to give us more allocation for money and we know that they need the money or B; How do we make them ⁓ drive more revenue with us? And how do we get more creative? And so sometimes it was just changing or adapting what that looked like. And I’ll use an example, golf. Everyone loves golf. Everyone loves golf or top golf. And oftentimes we saw zero revenue in returns. So you put up this upfront cost and you pay it you wouldn’t see anything in the background. So we’d say, okay, how can we adapt or change this to something that would still be fun but drive a different sort of revenue. And so we came up with something called brews and news, which was you could go to a local brewery and you would have maybe a half an hour assessment where somebody would come up, they would talk about the state of cyber attacks, what this means in your area, how we can help you and deliver that. And we would do that with our partners by our side, right? So it was in to their customers side by side with our partners. And then we would just relax and…
Maybe it was Topgolf or maybe it was beers and a brewery or maybe it was whatever it was. But it always started with education first. Education preceded everything else that we did because there was a lack of understanding about the portfolio, about the risks. You know, we all know it’s not if, but when a cyber attack happens, but you don’t really understand, you know, where that focus is happening, right? So how do you ⁓ detect and mitigate quickly and where are the biggest trends happening. So there’s a lot of different versions of threat reports, but if you can educate your customers on to what do I in my crystal ball seat happening in 2026 based upon our our sock information, our compliance, our global touch points and what we’re seeing in the universe right now, we can help you with that. That’s a big thing like use us for the information and the data driven metrics that we can provide you to help drive that.
And then beyond that, it’s like, okay, well, every partner wants leads, right? This is where I talk about account mapping. You may be in a certain territory. We may have some ins there. You may have some ins there. Let’s marry them up against each other and figure out how we can address that gap or, or win our fair share of the business in that market together. I think that’s where you need a team whether it’s your sales or market or channel team that’s kind of working closely with your partners in that theater or territory or based range. And if you don’t have the capacity to do that, if you don’t have BDRs or sales development managers, maybe you do need to outsource that so you could qualify. Like if you go to an event like IT Nation Connect or…cause say a data con or whatever have you, and you have 4,000 people in the room or CPX for MSP summit with 8,000 people in the room. How am going to qualify those leads quickly? Is it going to be my sales team picking up the phone and dialing for dollars or is that something I’m better off outsourcing to a company like marketopia to, to quantify the market qualified leads and translate the sales qualified leads.
And that’s the immortal problem between sales and marketing. You gave me crap leads. You ⁓ didn’t close the leads we gave you, right? So to eliminate that, you can actually qualify better upfront and that you have more focus on the solutions in the backend, I think would be an example of that.
Terry Hedden (54:44)
You know, Michelle, your perspective on things is awesome. I think it’s a combination of you working at different organizations with different budgets and different maturity levels, different partner programs. I want to shift gears for a second and talk about where the channel’s going. Where do you see, if you’re a channel chief, and I want you to tell me what you want to do right now to affect 2027 KPIs.
What are you going to do? What are the big things that you’re going to do over the next 12 months to make sure that 2027 is the best year your organization has ever had? And I want not necessarily yours specifically, but in general, if I’m a channel chief, what am I focused on? What innovation do I bring to the table? What’s new out there that can really move the needle for me and my partners?
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (55:33)
Yeah, spot on. I mean, you should always be thinking about that, right? And I think the buzzword of the last two years has been generative AI. And I think no differently. A lot of people are scared about it. I’m excited for it because I feel like it has potential to lessen workloads of mundane tasks that are not really driving strategic thinking and outsource that in that way, but allow the people that are skillful to prompt it in ways that make your products that much more effective, your marketing that much easier to create these campaigns and these Rolodexes and these ability for ⁓ customer support to take a database of problems that you have where seconds are costing companies money and you can assess and quickly provide understanding and ⁓ treatment to their problems very quickly and efficiently and effectively, but also enablement, right? We treat enablement like all people learn at the same pace, and that’s not true, right? It may take you one time to learn it, it may take me three times to hear it before I actually get it, or vice versa, depending on the topic. And when you think about things that way, you may have a team of 50 people sitting in Tampa headquarters that some of them, are experts because they’ve been with you a different amount of maturity than somebody who’s just starting out and is one month in the job. Right. And how do they maybe they’re new to the technology space. Maybe they’re new to marketopia. Maybe they’re new to some of the nomenclature and the like alphabet soup of acronyms that we all live in, which differ company to company. How do you upscale your team quickly, efficiently and effectively? And then that translates in my world to how do you do that with your partners? Right. And I’ll use Sonic wall as an example again, because they were a firewall vendor. mean, they had access points and switches as well, but traditionally that’s what they’re most known and loved for. And then you’re saying, no, we’re going to, we’re going to have a completely new product portfolio. Carrero we’re known for DDoS. Great. But now we’re going to have a completely new and exciting portfolio. Awesome.
How do you upskill your team who’s been used to doing this for a decade to all of this newness, right? And when it comes to that, it’s very important that you’re retaining that they’re not checking a box. I think that a lot of people, just learn to, you know, I watched this training, boom, click. can say, I watched this video, I fast forwarded it, I muted it. I was watching Stranger Things while I did it. I wasn’t adapting or paying attention. How do I now assess their level of understanding. And then moreover, how do you take that information and serve it back to you as a leader and say, here’s where your gaps are. You thought it was this, but it’s actually this or to that person and say, here’s where you can work on. let’s, ⁓ I’ll use language as an example, right? Like Duolingo or Babbel or ⁓ Jumpspeak. You may learn the words, but you don’t know how to pronounce them. The way you pronounce them.
It doesn’t sound like anything to the people that you’re saying it to, because you’re articulating it incorrectly. So it’s perfecting not only the understanding, but the application of what you’ve learned in an environment where you can sell and you can do that. And so I think that’s where I see a lot of our world going. And I’m sure companies like Marketopia are going to make investments in AI if you haven’t. You probably have done a lot already there, right? But then I think about myself and my company what can we do in-house and what do we need to outsource to experts who have invested in this and say, you know, where do we draw our lines of ownership? Because I’d like to focus on what we do best and let the people who focus on what they do best help us.
Terry Hedden (59:33)
Love that. ⁓ Marketobia definitely sees itself in the grand scheme of things as an enabler. So you get the vendors on one side trying to hit their numbers and sell their products and build their organizations for the benefit of their stakeholders. And you have the MSPs that are over here wanting the same thing for themselves, but we kind of see ourselves in the middle. So we are investing a tremendous amount of money in AI and see ourselves as basically, the people that are going help the MSPs build their AI portfolio, the people that are going to get them leads, people are going to help them close sales. So we have in-house AI gurus and we’re going to lease them to MSPs to help with them internally as well as their customers. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re going to really work with the partners, the resellers to make sure that the non-product AI and the strategy of AI is successful.
By focusing on marketing, lead gen sales, but also helping them kind of understand how to deliver the value of AI when the average MSP maybe doesn’t have that kind of skill internally. So, so that’s been our approach. And I think it’s really awesome that you’re focused on that as well in terms of just leveraging AI, teaching other people how to do the same. And Michelle, it’s the theme that I hear over and over with you, which is, love it. I want to listen to truly understand. I’m going to step back and analyze and kind of look at my channel program.
Look at where we’re successful, where we’re not. Look for opportunities to partner with firms like Marketopia or others to fill in holes. I want to do the same internally, you know, with my team and my resources. I want to encourage MSPs to the same, kind be honest with themselves, fix the holes, doing the same thing over and over is not going to get you where you’re trying to go. I think that’s a very simple thought, but it sounds to me like your approach to channel management is to do that at scale and do that.
in a very comprehensive way so that you understand where to focus. You prioritize based on value, not just budget. ⁓ I guess you’re focused on doing everything you can to drive results and helping others do the same. And I think that’s awesome. And I think it’s probably one of the reasons you’ve been so successful in your career and it’s not surprising at all. So I really thank you, Michelle, for coming aboard and sharing your wisdom.⁓ I think it’s invaluable. If you want to be a world-class channel chief, ⁓ it’s important to have the perspective to me that you have versus coming in almost biased about what’s important based on the company you work for, which tends to be tent nor technically led with product in the center. Yours is much more about the partnership. You can’t ignore the technology, but you really have to be a great partner.
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (1:02:24)
Absolutely. And for every partner out there, we have market development funds, we have business development funds, ask or you don’t receive. So figure out what your needs are and don’t wait for a vendor to come to you. Come to me and tell me, Michelle, I’d love to work with you and this is what we need. And do that with every vendor in your stock. And if you have that assertion, I think that you’re going to come to much better, faster, quicker results. You may not get everything you want, but I tell my daughters this.
If you don’t ask, you don’t receive. So that’s where we have to lead and, know, listen, but then take action. Vendors don’t just listen for the sake of listening.
Terry Hedden (1:03:02)
And I feel like you’re spot on. So many partners have big dreams and don’t do what it takes to achieve them. And sometimes it’s as simple as stepping back, thinking, and just asking those around you, like the Michelle McBain’s or their channel partners, all the vendors in their stack, help me, help me help you, you know, and be there. think those are wise words for the reseller as well. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you much for joining us today. And I wish you the best of luck in the new, the newest step in your career. And I can’t wait to see big things to come in the years to come.
Michelle Ragusa-McBain (1:03:31)
Likewise, I look forward to it. Hopefully we get to work together again soon. We’d love it. Thank you.
Terry Hedden (1:03:35)
Take care, Michelle.
