Balaji Subramanian: Building Partner Programs that Align with Customers

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
You. Hey everyone. We're back here at Catalyst, and it's been a fantastic day. What is it Thursday? I'm losing track of the week. It is Thursday, so yeah, just a great event. People are kind of out doing a lot of networking at this point and checking out sessions and doing all those kinds of things. So I am really excited to be joined by my friend Balaji Subramanian, yes, how did I do? And so Balaji is, most recently was head of VP of partnerships for zawara, and long career in partnerships and very successful. And so first of all, I guess, welcome,

Balaji Subramanian  0:45  
yes. Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time today to have this sort of informal chat in this environment, right? A lot of energy. So love it, yeah,

Chip Rodgers  0:55  
yeah. So you know, you've, you've built a lot of, you know, very successful partner programs. I thought, let's, why don't we talk a little bit about, what are some principles, some of the things that you've, you know, done, and maybe some examples of, you know, like, how you how you think about partnerships, you know, these are partner leaders that are, that are watching and, you know, what, what? What what are some things that have worked for you in the past? Yeah,

Balaji Subramanian  1:22  
well, I think one thing I've learned, it's always good to share, right? So from a learning standpoint, is that don't build a partner program without aligning or understanding who your customer is, right? A lot of times, I've made the mistake of going off and like, Let's build a partner program without fully understanding who the ICP is, right, who the ideal customer profile is, where the product fit is, who your customer segments are. Is it enterprise, large, enterprise, SMB, right, who the industries are, right? So if you get all of those aligned, and it's you're aligned with your stakeholders, then you can decide what types of partners you need to go and recruit on board, enable right and build a partner program around them that aligns back to this go to market strategy. So that's one key learning that I've learned over the years that I didn't know when I first started doing this kind

Chip Rodgers  2:19  
of stuff. Yeah. So how do you how do you do, like what, as you're thinking about, you know, the kind of part customers that that you have, are there different sort of levels of partners that might be addressing different, different audiences, and how do you think about it, from a services partner, versus tech partners?

Balaji Subramanian  2:42  
Absolutely, that's a great question, and something a partner leader has to sort of rationalize and understand, right, is, if it's a enterprise type of customer, you're probably better suited to have a a GSI, for example, be that key partner for you, because they're the ones who have those relationships, right, with those enterprise customers. They're the ones who want to upsell those customers and have them for life. And so they're the ones who can refer you in there a lot better. However, if you're going after an SMB type of customer with high transaction, right? That type of reseller, type of partner, was probably better suited, maybe for that type of type of customer. And then I'll throw in industries, right? Because industries are so important, I think these days, right? And so that customer segment plus industry is what you need to really understand to go and pick the right type of partner, right and before I forget, in this day and age, especially in a world of ecosystems, a partner leader, needs to be able to understand the technology that they're working with the domain, and really work well with ISVs, those technology ISVs to build those integrations right with your respective companies products, and really have the commercial terms and the playbook with those integration partners as well aligned. So think about it that way, segment customer, segment size of the customer industry, and then technology all come into play. Love

Chip Rodgers  4:23  
that, yeah, that's, that's the whole, the whole circle there, exactly, exactly, yeah. So you talked about stakeholders earlier, how, what's, what are some things that you've done as you're, you know, starting and building a partner program to make sure that you kind of bring the organization along,

Balaji Subramanian  4:43  
yeah, you know, that's one of probably the biggest learnings I've got, hard way too, by the way, is that, you know, when I first joined, you know, sort of became a partner leader and all that, I said, Ah, 70% of my time partner, facing 30% internally. Internally, frankly, I think it's almost the opposite. It should be at least 50% maybe even higher, internally focused on your internal stakeholders, your marketing colleagues, your sales colleagues, your product colleagues, legal, finance, IT spend, your CRO your CEO, right? All of these people are so important, because many of them, I respectfully say this right, don't pay as much attention to partnerships as they probably want to, and so they forget things. They don't realize it. You kind of get isolated. You don't want to be isolated from the rest of your stakeholders, so spend at least 50% or more with your internal stakeholders, is what I've learned.

Chip Rodgers  5:42  
Yeah, that's, that's amazing. That's, it is so important, because I think it's a lot of times, it's a change management process, right? It's, it's sort of changed the culture and change the, you know, the thinking around, because it's so easy to be sort of insular and to bring partners in and to think about partners. It's, yeah,

Balaji Subramanian  6:01  
exactly, absolutely, change management, you said the right words. So a lot about what we do is lot about change management, right? And so you got to understand that, you know what works,

Chip Rodgers  6:11  
right? Okay, so here's a, just a kind of off the cuff kind of question, AI, is a big topic at, you know, here at Catalyst, and I'm curious your thoughts about, how can AI be applied to the partnership role and for partnership leaders? Yeah,

Balaji Subramanian 6:32  
AI, you can go all over the place with that, right? But you know, when I think about AI, I think about data really, because you can't do anything AI ish without data, right? And so, and we as partner leaders, and any enterprise company, we have so much data that we don't use or we misplace or we ignore. And so I think AI gives us an opportunity, not only partner leaders, but other leaders, the opportunity to take that data, use it in a very deliberate manner, a purposeful manner, to be able to help do things cheaper, faster, better, right, automate our lives, provide more insights. So the experiences that we can provide our partners are going to be much better because of that, right? That experience is going to be something that we really care about. Easy to do business is so important for our partners, right? So we want them getting up thinking about us, right? A partner leader every morning saying, I want to work with you a lot more. And I think AI gives us that opportunity, hopefully, to be able to do those things in a much better way. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  7:44  
that's awesome. Yeah. Fauci, thank you so much for for stopping by and and sharing your thoughts and and always good to always good to see you. And we have another day and a half, maybe

Balaji Subramanian 8:00  
exactly No. Thank you. Appreciate it, and it's always good to work with you and work span and and you know all my other colleagues out there as well.

Chip Rodgers  8:09  
Fantastic. Thank you for joining us again, and we'll see you next time. Thanks everybody. You.

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