Margaret Adam: From Analyst to Operator in the Partner Ecosystem

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[00:00:00] Margaret Adam: So I think marketplace is a big topic. And all that goes with that. 'cause how do you incentivize a marketplace? Does it come into your number, right? How do we give quota retirement to our sellers if something transacted on marketplace? It's a big hairy, complex, but exciting part of the

[00:00:20] Chip Rodgers: Hey, everyone. Chip Rodgers. I'm excited to be joined today by Margaret Adam. Margaret welcome.

[00:00:25] Margaret Adam: Thank you, Chip. Good to be here.

[00:00:27] Chip Rodgers: Yeah, so we are here in Palo Alto at the El Prado Hotel and Channelscaler has an event today that is really well attended. Got a bunch of people signed up and a great topic around AI for partner for partner folks.

[00:00:41] Chip Rodgers: I'm excited.

[00:00:42] Margaret Adam: Yeah, me too. Very excited. And it's the first big event we've done since we rebranded, so it's also like our coming out party as Channelscaler. So yeah very exciting.

[00:00:50] Chip Rodgers: That's great. So I'm excited also to have Margaret here. Margaret, you and I have known each other for quite a while.

[00:00:56] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Going back to IDC days. Yeah. And Margaret [00:01:00] is Director of Product Marketing with Channelscaler and previously also with Salesforce, but a long time I think. Maybe 12, 13 years with IDC. Yeah. As an analyst.

[00:01:11] Margaret Adam: Yeah. Close to 14 years. And I was the leading ecosystems analyst. I covered, everything's partnering, so pretty much my whole career has been partnering.

[00:01:19] Chip Rodgers: That's great. You and Steve White is our, all of our friend as well.

[00:01:23] Margaret Adam: Amazing. Yeah. We used to work with you guys quite a lot of things, yeah. Yeah. Nice to see the industry always come around and the same kind of people. It's great. It's a real community. Yeah.

[00:01:32] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. That's for sure. And you're based in the UK?

[00:01:34] Chip Rodgers: I am, yeah. In London. In London, yeah. Yeah. So as Director of Product Marketing for Channelscaler, tell me a little bit, let's start with, what is your role and what are the things that you're working on today?

[00:01:46] Margaret Adam: Sure. Yeah. Product marketing is quite multidimensional. So if I think about it, the first pillar is around really supporting our go to market motions. So how we message, how we position, how we tell our story how we explain our products. And part of that is [00:02:00] obviously understanding market need, understanding customer need, understanding what our competitors are doing, of course, and getting all of those feeds.

[00:02:07] Margaret Adam: So my job sits in between Sales. Marketing and Products. And I act as the voice of customer into our product teams. I act as. Products into our GoTo Market teams and then do a lot around influencing how we are perceived, right? So I manage analyst relations, for example. I work a lot on our thought leadership.

[00:02:29] Margaret Adam: I do keynotes, so I'm doing what I'm doing today. But yeah, and I guess my analyst experience really plays to that. Yeah, it's a really interesting role. And obviously. Me like everybody else. What I've been doing looking at ai. So you know, we've been building out our AI strategy.

[00:02:45] Margaret Adam: We've got some announcements actually today around some new capabilities. But then that's

[00:02:49] Chip Rodgers: exciting. Great topic.

[00:02:50] Margaret Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Really exciting. But also challenging I think. So my keynote is actually all around how do you make it real? 'cause it can get really overwhelming very quickly.

[00:02:58] Margaret Adam: There's a lot of [00:03:00] movement and I think for a lot of channel leaders, it's how do we actually apply that in a tangible way right now? So part of what I do is I do a lot of workshops with customers around Art of Possible. I've obviously got a very strong background in terms of partner programs and what is best practice.

[00:03:15] Margaret Adam: So looking at not only how your programs did evolve, but then also how do you automate that and where does AI play and where's AI gonna make the most impact? So yeah, it's been super interesting. Couple of months I think. And not only that, we rebranded, so obviously, you had yeah, a lot of work around refreshing our messaging and positioning and what is our vision for, Channelscaler in the future.

[00:03:38] Chip Rodgers: I love the name.

[00:03:39] Margaret Adam: Thank you. I love it too. Yeah. It says what we do, right? We help companie scale the channels channel. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, it's great. That's great.

[00:03:47] Chip Rodgers: Let's start with you with your keynote, let's talk about ai. I think that's, I'd love to talk more broadly about industry trends and things like that, but obviously AI is a big one.

[00:03:57] Chip Rodgers: What are you hearing in the market [00:04:00] and and maybe give us a little preview to your keynote this morning.

[00:04:04] Margaret Adam: Yeah, great. So it's interesting. When I started prepping for this, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to say. And I went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of really interesting research opinions, articles, announcements, right?

[00:04:16] Margaret Adam: And I actually realized that should be the core of my keynote, is how do you cut through the noise, right? And really focus on making it very tangible. There's a lot of data that's come out. There was that MIT report, right? 95% of Gen AI pilots failing, not delivering any return of investment within the first six months.

[00:04:32] Margaret Adam: How do you avoid that? And so I've structured a framework which looks at. What does it mean in terms of your partner strategy, your programs, your people and of course your PRM and but really make it tangible and look at real world examples in terms of how, what you can do right now fully conscious.

[00:04:50] Margaret Adam: It's evolving so fast that, in six months time is probably gonna look very different, but it's meant to be something that is pragmatic. So that's really what I'm looking at. And as part of that. [00:05:00] What parts of your program do you need to prioritize right now? How do you get your people to be AI ready in terms of your partner account managers?

[00:05:07] Margaret Adam: What are the kind of tactical things you could do? What kind of partners you should you be identifying? How do you accelerate them? And then looking at programs in all likelihood. AI right now is gonna show up in your co-sell programs first, right? It's gonna be your sis and your ISVs and your tech partners that are building that.

[00:05:25] Margaret Adam: How do you bring AI discoverability into those co-sell programs? How do you use AI to do that? But also how do you surface which partners are doing what? 'Cause they're building out portfolios, right? It's changing very fast. And there's, not all of it is discoverable. 'cause there's a lot of.

[00:05:41] Margaret Adam: Building internally, it's not necessarily visible. So for vendors, you wanna know which partners to go deep with. So it's a lot around how do you bring in discoverability into all of those touch points. So it's really trying to make it very real. 'cause there's a lot of talk, but how do you actually apply that in a way that's gonna make an [00:06:00] impact?

[00:06:00] Margaret Adam: Yeah.

[00:06:00] Chip Rodgers: So that's a great way to frame the conversation because it is very noisy. There are a lot of announcements, there's a lot of money coming, just being dumped in. So there's a new, a lot of new product announcements. There are things that are constantly changing. It's changing so fast.

[00:06:17] Chip Rodgers: It's like, how do you even keep track of what the heck is going on? Something that was really

[00:06:24] Margaret Adam: ChatGPT to help you? No. Yeah, it is. It's so much. And as I said, like I had to just stop researching 'cause I was getting to a point where it was. I was just completely overwhelmed. I was going down different rabbit holes all the time, right?

[00:06:37] Margaret Adam: So it is going back to basics and thinking about, okay, what do we need to solve for ourselves? And then how can AI apply that? I think is probably the best way to do it. So really looking at that. I often talk about it as a, as is in two B stage, right? We can see the potential for ai let's imagine what that looks like, where are we right now?

[00:06:57] Margaret Adam: And so then we can identify what we need to transition to [00:07:00] really get us to that point. And so that's really what my keynote's gonna focus on today. And some people will be further along and some will be, starting out, right? And so it's trying to just highlight the things that I think are making an impact right now.

[00:07:13] Chip Rodgers: So I loved one of the things you said I really love too, which is how do you get your team, up to speed on what is possible with ai? And I think it's, I think it's really important for everyone to just use it and just push that maybe have regular, I don't know, lunch and learns or something like that with the team to say, Hey, here's something that I did because get people thinking outside, like just understanding what it.

[00:07:39] Chip Rodgers: Is capable of.

[00:07:40] Margaret Adam: Yeah, absolutely. And once you start that and they see the potential, then they start to apply it. Yeah. And light bulbs. Yeah, exactly. So a really cool example, I'm talking about my keynote actually. ThoughtSpot in EMEA. It's a guy I used to work with at Salesforce, he's SVP of at ThoughtSpot in EMEA.

[00:07:56] Margaret Adam: And he did a AI hackathon, but with their go to market team. [00:08:00] So these are not developers, these are not data analytics people

[00:08:04] Chip Rodgers: Love it

[00:08:05] Margaret Adam: Salespeople, right? AEs and partner account managers, basically. And they did a 30 minute ideation workshop where they thought. Really getting creative about the art of possible, but then they actually had to build it and so they built nine go to market agents.

[00:08:18] Margaret Adam: And all of the use cases are really around stuff that, a person in the field needs. It's guiding on what content to, to use doing things like, light competitive analysis doing yeah, there was like nine really sales specific agents that came and developed and I think that just created a.

[00:08:36] Margaret Adam: Not only a comfort level, but also a, an enthusiasm for how this can help me, in my job. And I think that's where you see that, that switch.

[00:08:44] Chip Rodgers: I love that. That's terrific. Okay, so AI is dominating everything, but if we think beyond that, let's talk about just Margaret, what are you hearing in the industry?

[00:08:54] Chip Rodgers: What are the other topics that are really important for partner folks today? [00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Margaret Adam: Yeah. And I think we get distracted by AI 'cause there's still a lot going on elsewhere, right? So obviously there's a lot around ecosystem in general. I think marketplace is really having its moment. We've been talking about marketplaces and partner participation marketplaces when I was an analyst, right?

[00:09:14] Margaret Adam: So a decade or more. But it's really starting to become a, really viable business and channel for partners, right? And I think we've seen real maturity in terms of how. Those marketplaces are embracing partners. And I think there's, it is obviously, evolving all the time, but some really interesting motions that are being built into it, right?

[00:09:37] Margaret Adam: So I think marketplace is a big topic. And all that goes with that. 'cause how do you incentivize a marketplace? Does it come into your number, right? How do we give quota retirement to our sellers if something transacted on marketplace? It's a big hairy, complex, but exciting part of the market.

[00:09:54] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Huge opportunity.

[00:09:55] Margaret Adam: Yeah. Massive. Massive. And it, and I think. It's now becoming that engine for enterprise [00:10:00] procurement. You're starting to see a degree of sophistication where your GSIs cannot really start to participate in marketplace. So yeah, a lot of activity around marketplace and closely linked to that as co-sell, of course.

[00:10:09] Margaret Adam: Marketplace often becomes a landing point for co-sell, becomes a landing point for multi-partner deals. So a lot of program changes in that space. Linked to that is the always complex issue of attribution. How do you recognize contributions from non-transactional partners, from marketplace opportunities and really getting a lot more granular in terms of how you recognize contribution and attribute specific opportunities.

[00:10:36] Chip Rodgers: Always a hot topic.

[00:10:38] Margaret Adam: Always a hot topic and really difficult to solve for, right? I've faced this in my own roles yeah, and I think linked to that is just being a lot more data driven in general.

[00:10:46] Margaret Adam: Again, to talk about ai, AI's only as good as a data foundation. It works on, right? AI cannot work across disconnected systems. That can't trigger in action unless those systems are connected. And so partner data, which has always been fragmented and sitting [00:11:00] in different systems, right?

[00:11:01] Margaret Adam: There's a lot of cleaning up around getting that data to be unified, to be actionable, to be AI ready, right? And part of that of course is then the attribution story becomes more important too because you can now start to really start to report on performance in a way that the business wants.

[00:11:18] Margaret Adam: So a lot of activity around that. And then incentives, I think

[00:11:21] Chip Rodgers: Partner ops is a tough topic especially for growing companies because. You can't you may not be able to fund even a headcount, right? So it ends up being part of marketing ops or sales ops.

[00:11:34] Margaret Adam: Oh, totally. And it's so much more complex actually.

[00:11:36] Margaret Adam: You're dealing with third parties. Even in large, we've got some very large customers. Even then they've got teams that are small, right? Tiny, one or two people. So yeah, partner teams on lean, partner officer, and way lean. But I guess that's where AI has the most potential to make an impact, I think.

[00:11:51] Margaret Adam: My advice is really focus on that and just removing all of that rep re repetitious work and get them to focus on really, the data [00:12:00] performance side of things. Yeah, and linked to that by the way, is also incentives. And there's two sides to incentives. One is sales cycles are longer, there's more stakeholders involved.

[00:12:11] Margaret Adam: Deals are harder to close. So are your incentives aligned to the realities of that sales process right now? How do you adjust for the realities of the market? And then obviously on the execution of those incentives, right? And again, that becomes a data story. How do you make it

[00:12:27] Chip Rodgers: measurement

[00:12:28] Margaret Adam: and more measurable and be able to show the impacts that's, linked to those incentives?

[00:12:33] Margaret Adam: So that's been another big area and something that comes up in our conversations. But yeah, if I had to narrow it down, a lot of it is around data and performance and showing impact as you'd imagine in the current climate. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

[00:12:46] Chip Rodgers: So a lot of challenges. Yeah. But we've

[00:12:49] Margaret Adam: seen good things happen.

[00:12:50] Margaret Adam: We've seen progress. I've been around the channel my whole career now, a long time. And are you actually starting to see a degree, I think technology and PRM has really helped to enable that, right? You're [00:13:00] starting to be able to automate a lot more and get a lot. Better at that reporting.

[00:13:04] Margaret Adam: It's still not there yet.

[00:13:06] Chip Rodgers: Margaret, I'm curious about your sort of, career progression. So long time as an analyst and you're giving advice, right? You have to understand the market and then talk about what's happening. You're hearing a lot and then feeding a lot back to clients.

[00:13:20] Chip Rodgers: Now you're, well since Salesforce, right? You are a. You're operating, right? Yeah. Actually

[00:13:27] Margaret Adam: doing it, not just advising, it's way harder. Don't tell the analyst.

[00:13:33] Chip Rodgers: So tell me about that.

[00:13:35] Margaret Adam: Yeah, no, it's interesting. So I started out in, I started out a vendor in a partner role, partner facing role. And then I was funded headcounts at distributors.

[00:13:43] Margaret Adam: And I then actually worked in partners, so I had a life pre IDC as well. Yeah. So I worked in an SI and that's what moved me into the analyst world 'cause of my services experience. And then I was an analyst for 14 years and a very interesting time in the industry. 'cause obviously there was, the emergence of cloud.

[00:13:59] Margaret Adam: I think one of the [00:14:00] first big projects I as analyst was how do we define the cloud? What is it, what isn't it? Interesting. Yeah, it was really interesting. And then there was a huge transformation of course associated with cloud. And. Particularly for partners moving into that recurring revenue model and so on.

[00:14:14] Margaret Adam: I got really interested in that and that transformation piece. And then it was digital transformation, right? And that again, required a massive transformation in the channel. And what does this mean? And that's where I think, and you know very well that the ecosystem. You started to understand a kind of, these platform based businesses and how they made money out of ecosystem.

[00:14:34] Margaret Adam: It became really super interesting. So it was ecosystem that got me out of analyst world into a real hands on job, right? Not that got

[00:14:42] Chip Rodgers: Salesforce, huge ecosystem sales,

[00:14:44] Margaret Adam: Massive ecosystem. And my role there was really doing, I sat in partner marketing, but it was more of a go to market role because it was.

[00:14:53] Margaret Adam: Really focusing on specific industries, identifying really specific use cases, understanding the tech stack that would support [00:15:00] those use cases. Those would be partners of ours. And then building a go-to market around it, right? And some of those partners were the likes of Accenture, AWS, snowflake, some really like specific ISVs.

[00:15:11] Margaret Adam: And then the internal ecosystem at Salesforce of kind of Salesforce core, Tableau, CMN analytics, MuleSoft, slack, right? And the stakeholder management was unbelievable. So it, just, and just around and so you get empathy for what customers try to do, right? Yeah. But, and really building out that go to market.

[00:15:32] Margaret Adam: So it was super hard, but it was really interesting and yeah. Again, it's, we get how impactful ecosystem can be, but actually executing it does require new approaches and new thinking. Yeah.

[00:15:44] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. I love that. So talk a little bit, you mentioned that there, you'll, you have some announcements today.

[00:15:50] Chip Rodgers: Maybe this won't be published until after your keynote, so maybe you could share

[00:15:55] Margaret Adam: a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. So I think at the highest level, those who [00:16:00] aren't familiar with us, Channelscaler is obviously a new brand. It was merged, life was created out of the formation of all banner channel mechanics.

[00:16:07] Margaret Adam: So we merged about. A year ago, I think officially. Yeah. And so as part of that, obviously we had competing products. So we've been working very hard to unify the platform and to create a consistent experience. We are showing that new platform today it's not necessarily a new platform, but it's an evolution and kind of creating consistent experience for Allbound and Channel Mechanics customers.

[00:16:30] Margaret Adam: At the same time, obviously it's an opportunity to modernize the right. And so we do have, as you pointed out, we've got some AI announcements. We've got a deal reg agent, we've got MDF concierge service that are live in market real. Not vaporware. Exactly. So I'll be talking a little bit about around those innovations and sharing a bit in terms of our roadmap, obviously.

[00:16:48] Margaret Adam: And yeah, I think that's but it's enough. I think that's quite exciting. So it is, as I said, this is the first time we're coming together. We've always got a new CEO so Brian will be here and will obviously be given [00:17:00] opportunity to meet with a lot of our customers and partners.

[00:17:03] Margaret Adam: Yeah.

[00:17:03] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. I understand. Kenneth is taking the CTO. Role as the product sort of product and technology leader. Kenneth is awesome. Yeah,

[00:17:11] Margaret Adam: Exactly. It's amazing. And now we can, really focus on that. It's a super exciting time for him to be bringing that innovation into us. Obviously with AI it's just yeah.

[00:17:19] Margaret Adam: So really happy. So he's found a CTO and then we've got Brian as CEO, who's here today as well.

[00:17:24] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. That's fantastic. Margaret, this has been terrific. Really appreciate you taking some time and sharing your thoughts about. The market, the industry, and about Channelscaler as well.

[00:17:35] Margaret Adam: No, thank you.

[00:17:36] Margaret Adam: And thank you for coming. I follow you. I really appreciate all that you do to feed insight back into the community, so I really appreciate you coming here today as well and taking the time to talk to me. Yeah, it's

[00:17:46] Margaret Adam: fantastic. So thank you Margaret, and thank you all for joining and we will see you again next time.

[00:17:52] Margaret Adam: Thanks everybody.

Thanks.

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