Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in our first live Partner Advisory Board (PAB) as the SVP Channels & Alliances at BeyondTrust. The setting was beautiful Monaco overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and the format was highly interactive. While there, I took the opportunity to record a live podcast to hear what our Partner Advisory Board members thought of the PAB and the importance of a modern partner ecosystem.
Joining me in this podcast are Dana Reed, Distinguished Engineer, Office of the CTO at SailPoint; Eric Kohl, Vice President Advanced Solutions, Security & Networking at Ingram Micro; Per Samuelsen, Business Unit Lead at ICY Security; and Brent Thurrell, Chief Revenue Officer at BeyondTrust.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Here are 5 of the many things I learned during our PAB and this panel interview:
- Building a modern partner ecosystem requires changes within your own organization and your partners’. Structuring your PAB meetings using Appreciative Inquiry, a process for facilitating positive change, will help drive a highly interactive meeting and a deeper connection with and between your partners.
- Bringing a diverse set of partners to your PAB creates a mini partner ecosystem where partners learn about each other’s business models and geographic differences, and leads to valuable partner-to-partner connections.
- The move to SaaS and the changes in buyer behaviour are driving the necessity of a diverse partner ecosystem to land the customer, deliver business outcomes, and drive customer success.
- Partners are recognizing that they cannot do everything themselves and are seeing the need to find other high quality partners who can add additional layers of value to meet the needs of the customer throughout the modern buyer journey.
- There is no subsititue for live partner events to build relationships. The time we spent with our PAB members, both in the PAB meeting and outside on our excursions, was an important step in modernizing our partner program and building an orchestrated partner ecosystem.
LINKS & RESOURCES
-
- Follow Rob on LinkedIn
- Learn How To Develop An APAC Partner Ecosystem
- Learn how to Turn Partners Into Ecosystem Orchestrators
- Learn how to How To Build An Ecosystem Partner Program
- Learn more about Allbound
