Natasha Byrne: Building Trust Through Partner Transparency

[00:00:00] Natasha Byrne: We run annual planning process with our partners. So we wanna make sure that their goals are our goals and our goals are their goals. Yeah. There's a level of transparency that builds trust with partners. That's important, and that means bringing them into the fold.

[00:00:14] Natasha Byrne: and so we're, constantly doing joint account mapping, joint business planning, and we're like really making sure we're all on the same page with how we're gonna win.

[00:00:26] Chip Rodgers: Hey everyone, Chip Rodgers, here again with another episode of Inside Partnering and, just really excited to be joined by Natasha. Natasha Byrne. Natasha, welcome.

[00:00:38] Natasha Byrne: Thanks for having me. Happy.

[00:00:39] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Yeah. So here we are. We're at, Asana headquarters, and, it's a great event going on. We're we just stepped a little bit to the side here for our conversation, but, I think.

[00:00:52] Chip Rodgers: A couple hundred people. Yeah. great turnout here. And great turnout. Yeah. Really fantastic and really good content and interesting conversation. [00:01:00] We're talking about hearing from other partner leaders talking about the challenges and it's oh yeah. I'm

[00:01:06] Natasha Byrne: nodding my head the whole time.

[00:01:08] Natasha Byrne: I'm just like, yes. Someone said, it's like a big therapy session for all the partner leaders.

[00:01:13] Chip Rodgers: It's needed. Exactly. So it's really, it's great. yeah. So first of all welcome Natasha. Thank you. Natasha Byrne is, Regional Vice President of Global Partner Alliances for Twilio.

[00:01:27] Chip Rodgers: And, Twilio's a wellknown brand big company, was a startup years ago, but, just doing terrific work. And, so your focus is really on. SI, partners and resellers. So you're, it's a partner sales role? Yes. And, so tell us more about that. First of all, your, background, many years in, in, technology, but it's interesting, we're talking about this earlier, that you started as a, in, in, in the pure sales role as an AE and then product [00:02:00] management and then like service delivery.

[00:02:02] Chip Rodgers: And so you've taken. an interesting sort of route to get to partnering. tell us about that and about what you're, what's happening at Twilio these days?

[00:02:10] Natasha Byrne: Yeah, definitely. So I'll start with my background. I have a bit of an unconventional way of have how I got into the partnership's role.

[00:02:18] Natasha Byrne: I've worn a lot of different hats. Someone once referred to me as an athlete, I think that was a nicer way of calling me, just like a generalist and when it comes to go to market, and I think that really has worked my advantage on, made me a successful leader and a successful partner person. Because as we've heard today, you need to really understand. Every part of go to market to be a successful partner

[00:02:39] Chip Rodgers: there. So true.

[00:02:40] Natasha Byrne: And yeah, I was an ae, I was a product manager. I managed a service delivery team for an SI partner. and then when I joined Twilio, I started in more of the programs and operations side of the house and then quickly built different teams that, ran the PMO and sales programs function.[00:03:00]

[00:03:00] Natasha Byrne: And then when we. Went through a little bit of a rebrand at Twilio. They asked me to rebuild our partner program, really focused on our flex business unit at the time. And our contact center partners. Yeah. And I used all of the, my past historical knowledge to be able to put together a partner program that encompassed sales incentives, the operation excellence piece.

[00:03:23] Natasha Byrne: The marketing piece, et cetera. from there I then stepped into a sales, back into a sales role and now lead the Global partner Alliance team. And we're responsible for all of our global SI partners, our referral partners and our resale partners. We have a team of eight. We're, no one is on the same time zone.

[00:03:43] Natasha Byrne: So that's an interesting, management challenge that I have, but it keeps things really interesting and. I say that I run four different businesses because every part of the world runs their partner business so differently, but it's a lot of fun.

[00:03:57] Chip Rodgers: That is so true. It is. each of the [00:04:00] different regions all have different, and not, just different.

[00:04:04] Chip Rodgers: Vendors, not just different companies, but different ways of partnering. A

[00:04:08] Natasha Byrne: hundred percent. A hundred percent. and so I've gotten a crash course international business in the past like year and a half that I've been in the role. I've got to travel to some really cool places too, and I love connecting with people and so connecting with people over different ways of doing business, different cultures, different food.

[00:04:27] Natasha Byrne: it's been really fun and rewarding. And also probably the hardest job that I've ever had too.

[00:04:32] Chip Rodgers: Interesting. So I love the, I love your sort of route to getting to, partnerships. And, tell me about the, the, your time at Twilio. So first you were in an operations role and then, putting the partner program in place and now you're, you've, you're using the program you built.

[00:04:52] Chip Rodgers: how has that. Worked. Has it, as now the sort of your in your own internal customer? Yeah. Has it turned out the way that you [00:05:00] had hoped as you were, putting shape to it?

[00:05:03] Natasha Byrne: My successor has done a much better job than I did with the partner program. So shout out to my girl Kyle, who is running our partner program currently.

[00:05:12] Natasha Byrne: But I have a newfound, I have a better appreciation for my internal stakeholders and my partners. Because I was on the other side of it too. So I think that empathy also helps as being a stakeholder. Partner programs also need to evolve. The partner program that I put together a few years ago were just for contact center partners, and now our partner program is for all of Twilio partners.

[00:05:33] Natasha Byrne: Yeah. Which is as it should be. Yeah. so it's really evolved. But. I also probably am hopefully a power user and a, a good stakeholder to have because I know how much work and how important it's, and I always say the success of our partners are based off of our programs and operations team.

[00:05:50] Natasha Byrne: I, can't hit my goals without them. So I'm a big believer in my cross-functional stakeholders. Yeah.

[00:05:56] Chip Rodgers: What are some of the, tell us a little bit about [00:06:00] the program. what were some of the key, elements that you put in place that are, that, that have worked and have been successful and have brought partners into the Twilio program?

[00:06:12] Natasha Byrne: So a theme that we keep talking, hearing about today is doing more with less, and, Bef the program that I had inherited before, we didn't have a lot of self-service capabilities. It was all high touch, all human touch needed to work through the portal and work through the certifications and every benefit that we had.

[00:06:30] Natasha Byrne: And so I really started initiative to, to look at what we had and say how much of this can. A self-service automated and repeatable if you would like. And there's a certain level of partners that need that white glove, high touch service. There's a certain level that doesn't, especially as you're start starting out.

[00:06:47] Natasha Byrne: So I really started that movement and we've really taken that and started to implement a lot that partners can do on their own. They don't need us to do certain things, so that's really helped us scale. Another thing that we did this year that has been really [00:07:00] important is just our, referral program, right?

[00:07:02] Natasha Byrne: Making sure that we have rep reciprocity between us and partners if they, if we want them to bring us pipe, which again we talked a lot about today. Yeah. How do we incentivize them to do that? Enable them to, identify the right customers or prospects for us, and then reward them for doing so. and so we've rolled out different.

[00:07:21] Natasha Byrne: incentive and referral programs this year, which have been very successful for our partners. Yeah,

[00:07:26] Chip Rodgers: that's great. How how are you, what kind of do you have, are they incentive programs and measure? Are they, how are they measured throughout that process?

[00:07:39] Natasha Byrne: Partners? So they're measured on we have different tiers on the Twilio partner program.

[00:07:43] Natasha Byrne: So you start, it's registered and then you move up silver, gold or silver, bronze, gold. On silver, gold. Yeah. And our top tier partners, our gold get the highest referral bounty for leads that are given. And they're paid out on the first, [00:08:00] year of the total contract value. is that, does that answer your question?

[00:08:05] Natasha Byrne: Yeah. Okay.

[00:08:06] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. and so they're, also measured that way? Yes. As well. as you look across sort of your whole ecosystem of partners, they're. They, you see the ones that are performing better.

[00:08:19] Natasha Byrne: Exactly. That we're seeing partners that are deal ridging more, that are then earning more, that are completing the most certifications, that are engaged with our sales teams, that are, doing, co-marketing events.

[00:08:31] Natasha Byrne: The engagement is what we're looking for to move partners. Each tier. Yeah. Within the

[00:08:36] Chip Rodgers: program. So I love how you, as you're talking about that, it's not just the, final, pure revenue number. It's all of the things that get you there.

[00:08:44] Natasha Byrne: Yeah, exactly. We're, I always say I'm not looking for a ton of partners right now in terms 'cause of, I'm very focused on side partners.

[00:08:52] Natasha Byrne: I'm looking for partners. Are engaged, that want to go the mile, thus, that wanna build those Twilio practices and really invest [00:09:00] with us. We're on a really unique journey at Twilio and we want partners as a really a key growth pillar for us to partner with us and invest right, and be along for the ride.

[00:09:09] Natasha Byrne: I want them to be an extension of our sales team and what we're doing. Yeah.

[00:09:14] Chip Rodgers: So let's talk about those sort of, comar go the go to market motions. Go to, the, co-marketing co-selling. How are those activities, programs, and activities working? Is it, you mentioned that you're really want have some of the, is quality over quantity.

[00:09:33] Chip Rodgers: how, tell us a little bit more about those motions.

[00:09:37] Natasha Byrne: Co-marketing really involves in, commitment from both us and from a partner, not just dollars. I'm talking about having people that are invested from a marketing perspective and understanding our story, understanding our message, and then, going out to their customers and evangelizing on our behalf.

[00:09:54] Natasha Byrne: And so I think the things that we see work really well is when we take the time to. [00:10:00] Run those sessions and those enablement with our partners, and then we incorporate them into our plans for the year. So we have big events like signals and transforms. And attach to each of those, which are our field events.

[00:10:12] Natasha Byrne: We have specific partner days ahead of those where we. meet with our partners. We hear about what's going on in the market. We get their feedback, we hear about their wins, we hear about what we're not doing great, right? Feedback is truly a gift, right? How do we improve? And so we're really starting to have those touch points so that we can learn and iterate and really meet our partners where they are.

[00:10:31] Natasha Byrne: And understand what their needs are. and those have been working really well. And then coming off of those, we set them up to be able to then have, covets with customers. We bring customers, they bring customers, and we start to, Just win more business together through, through those types of events.

[00:10:48] Natasha Byrne: So we're finding doing smaller, more bespoke tailored events, work better for us than, a larger scale webinars or campaigns. They're not really [00:11:00] working for us. we're really focused on in-person connection and that yielded really good results.

[00:11:07] Chip Rodgers: Does that include, when you're getting part together with, you're getting the field teams together, right?

[00:11:12] Chip Rodgers: Between Twilio and and partners. Are you doing a, joint account planning or how does that Yeah. Happen?

[00:11:20] Natasha Byrne: so yeah, we do it all. joint account planning is really important. We do regular QBRs where we look back at how the business is performing. we. do joint prospecting.

[00:11:30] Natasha Byrne: We show up to different marketing events together. and then we run annual planning process with our partners. So we wanna make sure that their goals are our goals and our goals are their goals. Yeah. There's a level of transparency that builds trust with partners. That's important, and that means bringing them into the fold.

[00:11:47] Natasha Byrne: and so we're, constantly doing joint account mapping, joint business planning, and we're like really making sure we're all on the same page with how we're gonna win. Yeah.

[00:11:56] Chip Rodgers: That's great. And so the co-sell motion, how is [00:12:00] that, are you, do you, are the field teams working together? Do they get, are they working on accounts?

[00:12:06] Chip Rodgers: Obviously they, they're doing through that joint account planning process, but how does that, how do the mechanics of, actually the co-sell process work?

[00:12:15] Natasha Byrne: Yeah, so at Twilio we call it joint selling. And we really, my team is that glue. So they're the ones that are responsible for working with our direct sales team to really understand what's the customer need, what, where does a partner fit in here?

[00:12:29] Natasha Byrne: And the earlier you bring in a partner, the better it is for everyone in the sales cycle. and then they choose which the right partner is to bring in. And then from there, we're all on the same team. And that's like kind of the beauty of these partners that we have today. They've been with us for five, 10 years.

[00:12:44] Natasha Byrne: They've gone through all these iterations of Twilio. They really know our product and our sales team trusts them. And so with that, we go to market together and we've got the Twilio expert on the call and then the partners there really selling the services and making that vision that our sales team is so great [00:13:00] at selling a reality.

[00:13:01] Natasha Byrne: Yeah. 'Cause at the end of the day, implementing Twilio can be complicated if you're doing more than just messaging. and a lot of our customers are, they're on that journey for digital transformation to really transform their customer experience. They need a partner to make that a reality.

[00:13:14] Natasha Byrne: Yeah. They need someone to help them build. And that's where our team comes in and where our partner community does. Yeah.

[00:13:21] Chip Rodgers: Love that. That's, that's, terrific. I think the, I think of partners as, you think of a virtual account team internally, right? You've got an, you've got maybe a product person and an industry person and whatever.

[00:13:35] Chip Rodgers: Like you've got a, a larger team. You're just extending it out to the, to a partner. And they have knowledge in the account. They have expertise that they can bring to the table as well.

[00:13:47] Natasha Byrne: Exactly. They have true influence that we and reach that we might not have. And if you view them as a force multiplier, which they are.

[00:13:56] Natasha Byrne: The AEs that become more successful and they end up Yeah. Making more money, [00:14:00] yeah. Exactly.

[00:14:05] Chip Rodgers: that's terrific. talk about ai, AI is always, on top of mind for everybody. How, talk a little bit about the, how partners are engaged in and helping your customers. get, get for more advanced on their a, a AI journey.

[00:14:23] Natasha Byrne: Yeah. So one of the things that we launched this year is our AI certification.

[00:14:28] Natasha Byrne: So we are specifically looking at who are our top partners, and we're having them go through a certification course where they're actually building solutions on Twilio, using different parts of ai, using our conversational intelligence product conversational relay product. And putting it into practice, right?

[00:14:46] Natasha Byrne: AI is not something you can just talk about. It's something you have to do and see and make it a reality. Yeah. And so we launched that and we launched a cohort of partners and this was before we went ga with the product. Customers who wanted that part piece of Twilio, they knew [00:15:00] what partners they could rely on and what partners were already ready to go because they had, built these solutions already.

[00:15:05] Natasha Byrne: So we're really making sure that we bring partners along for the ride as we integrate AI into our products, making sure that partners know, understand it and are using it to be successful.

[00:15:16] Natasha Byrne: Yeah.

[00:15:16] Natasha Byrne: We're also using AI as part of our incentive. So as you can imagine, Twilio gets a ton of inbound leads every quarter.

[00:15:23] Natasha Byrne: And we can't take all of them. We don't want all of them. And so what we've actually done is created our own agent that routes those leads that are appropriate for a partner, but maybe not our direct team to our partners. And so we're, giving leads to our partners that best fit their ICP and that's all done through ai.

[00:15:42] Natasha Byrne: So it's twofolds Training and enable them as we. Build it into our roadmap and then also using it as an incentive within our program.

[00:15:51] Chip Rodgers: Gosh, I love that. The rout lead routing process. That's really cool. 'cause you mentioned, targeted for their ICP. So there's a [00:16:00] lot of work that goes into building that ahead of time.

[00:16:03] Chip Rodgers: To understand, what. Is the right buyer? What's the right industry, whatever it might be for each partner.

[00:16:11] Natasha Byrne: Yeah, so what we've actually done is, we use in partner for our PRM. They've been great and. We on their partner directory listing, they have control over what their ICP is. So some partners change that every quarter.

[00:16:25] Natasha Byrne: Because they're still figuring that out of who they wanna target or what works best for them to get the most leads. Yeah. And then we've built an intelligent routing agent to be able to pick up

[00:16:34] Chip Rodgers: That is so cool.

[00:16:35] Natasha Byrne: It's really cool. Yeah. shout out to our programs team and in partner for putting that together.

[00:16:38] Natasha Byrne: But, it's been a real unlock for our partners. We're still refining it. It's not perfect, but, we're getting there and we're really excited about what it's gonna be able to do for our partners in the future.

[00:16:49] Chip Rodgers: It means partners are in control. And they can make changes along the way.

[00:16:53] Natasha Byrne: Yeah, exactly.

[00:16:54] Natasha Byrne: You put them in the driver's seat, they know their business, they know their ICP. It changes much like other ours does [00:17:00] at times. And we, We wanna give them that control. They own that, not us. But it's worked really well.

[00:17:06] Chip Rodgers: That's fantastic. Natasha, this has been fantastic. Anything that we didn't cover that you wanna talk about?

[00:17:12] Chip Rodgers: I don't think so. This has been great. really appreciate you taking the time and, sharing the things that, your six year run at Twilio and, and the, evolution of getting to partners. Now you're a partner person.

[00:17:28] Natasha Byrne: I'm a partner person. Yeah, exactly.

[00:17:30] Natasha Byrne: Never would've thought. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah,

[00:17:33] Chip Rodgers: it's fantastic. So Natasha, thank you and thank you all for joining, and we will see you again next time. Thanks everybody.

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