Building the Dream Team for Cloud GTM featuring Shane Wilson

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You talk about value exchange.

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You have to understand what you are bringing to the table

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so you get a mutual value exchange that put NetPause

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there for the partnership.

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And once you lock on that, do deep enablement internally,

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enable them with the cloud provider,

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and have a lot of success in the field with it.

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(upbeat music)

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- Welcome to Unlock Cloud Go-To-Market,

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the series where hosts Aaron Feiger

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and Patrick Riley share the essential stages

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of the Cloud GTM maturity model to start,

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optimize and grow your company's revenue through the cloud.

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They've helped countless ISVs tackle the ins and outs

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of their Cloud GTM motion.

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And in each episode, they're sharing those success stories

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from the people who have put them into place.

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Because ultimately, this way of thinking is the future,

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and the future is now.

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- Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode

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of Unlock Cloud Go-To-Market.

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This week we've invited Shane Wilson

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from Veritas to join us.

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He is the head of Global Cloud Go-To-Market,

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business development and alliances.

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And I've had the opportunity to work with Shane

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for the last six years when he first started out at Rubric

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and now continuing to help support Shane

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and the efforts that he's doing over at Veritas.

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You don't wanna miss this episode.

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I love how he is partnering with his internal team members

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to really drive Cloud Go-To-Market

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and optimize the impact that Cloud Go-To-Market has

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inside of Veritas.

1:33

Hello everyone, welcome to Unlock Cloud Go-To-Market.

1:37

This week on our episode, we have Shane Wilson

1:40

from Veritas, formerly at Rubric.

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I love the story you have to share today.

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I've known you for a while, been working with you

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for a long time, excited for you to share your story, Shane.

1:53

Hey Aaron, thanks so much for having me here.

1:55

It's been quite a journey and yeah, excited to share

1:57

all the Cloud Go-To-Market tips and tricks

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with your audience.

2:01

So yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.

2:03

I thought we'd just get started with like giving the audience

2:05

a little bit of an overview of your professional career.

2:09

I've been leading a Cloud Go-To-Market Cloud

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Biz Dev and Alliance's function for the better part

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of 11 or 12 years now at three different companies.

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But I came up in sales earlier in my career,

2:19

so tech sales with EMC and before it was Dell.

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And enterprise and commercial and different segments.

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And when I moved to Seattle, I started trying to sell to you

2:29

Amazon and AWS.

2:30

For me, that was actually a wake-up point in time.

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It was a NetApp at this time.

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They had less interest in buying much a NetApp

2:36

and more interest in partnering together

2:38

to do NetApp in the Cloud and marketplace.

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And you know, this thing that's turned into Cloud Go-To-Market

2:44

some 10 plus years later.

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And so yeah, it's been a fun ride.

2:47

So for the last 11 or so years,

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I've been doing this partnership, Alliance's work

2:53

with the public clouds and it's been great the last eight

2:57

or so years.

2:58

I've really pivoted that focus to not just

3:01

what a great partnership looks like

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and how you run great global alliances,

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but to hey, how you have to drive ARR and revenue

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through a Cloud Go-To-Market.

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And so that of course brings us to the sweet spot of tackle

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and core plus and really just Cloud Go-To-Market engine,

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which frankly is the largest lever for driving ARR

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in the world right now is both ISVs

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and established companies that start ups

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and larger companies, right?

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Think about how they grow their revenue with the Cloud.

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- And I remember when I signed with Rubric,

3:32

Rubric hired me to help them kickstart

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their Go-To-Market strategy with Microsoft.

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Range was new to the organization.

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He signed up Rubric as a Microsoft partner

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and then he was like, now what?

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And so Microsoft said, call Aaron Fanger.

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She can help you with your Microsoft strategy.

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So I start helping him like,

3:54

set up partner center and like,

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let's start figuring out what our first

3:58

Co-Sail deals are.

3:59

- The Rubric stories, there was a good one.

4:01

I'm happy to talk about that.

4:02

That was our first taste of really looking at

4:04

how do we make this a meaningful sales impact,

4:07

this being your partnership with Microsoft

4:10

and that just turned into Amazon and others as well.

4:12

But initially at this point in time, 2017,

4:16

it was a how do we make something meaningful happen

4:18

with Microsoft that can help us sell more product,

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help us reach more customers,

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help us have a stronger route to market.

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And so we started thinking about that

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and working on it with you and a small team at Core Plus.

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- Yes, we've come along right since then.

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One of the first things I did when joining Tackle

4:35

was work with Patrick and a few other folks

4:38

inside the company to really document this experience

4:42

into a maturity model.

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- So for those of you new to this concept

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and anybody new listening to the podcast,

4:48

Tackle has what we call our Cloud Good and Market maturity model.

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And essentially imagine this as a journey.

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So after evaluating hundreds of ISPs

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and where they are in their journey

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into implementing Cloud Good and Market

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as a true strategy or a true channel

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within their organization,

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now we put together the model that shows you

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how you progress through each of the stages.

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So think about it like climbing a ladder.

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And so we start at the bottom,

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establishing the foundation.

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We need a good footing on that ladder

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where we're gonna fall over and we get to the top.

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And so we go through the stages

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of establishing foundation, building adoption,

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driving adoption, we're near the top,

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and then scaling adoption,

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which is where we're kind of fully embedded as a channel

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within our company from Cloud Good and Market's perspective.

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And we're really maximizing automation and speed.

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So following this model,

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we can systematically enhance our Go to Market strategy

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and really ensure that we're maximizing our time to value

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and our company's success.

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So we're gonna talk about that theme

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as we go through this here with Shane today.

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So let's kind of start out with

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the establishing foundation phase.

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And Aaron, maybe you can tee us up with Shane

5:52

and how do we set that foundation right through his experience?

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>> Yeah, absolutely.

5:57

I loved our conversation that we had,

6:00

in preparation for the podcast.

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And you were talking about really

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that this is a up leveling a company's route to market.

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You're now at Veritas and you're like,

6:10

"Okay, I'm gonna do this again."

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And I'm gonna take all these great lessons

6:13

that I've learned from Rubric.

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I've got this recipe, I wanna repeat it,

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I wanna see what works, how do I tweak it,

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how do I continue to mature and evolve it?

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So you have this North Star at Veritas,

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which is selling on the marketplace.

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You know, just because you wanna sell

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and sell more through the marketplace,

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it doesn't just happen overnight.

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What is your point of view on how to achieve this goal

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of selling more through the marketplace?

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>> It's interesting because everyone wants to grow ARR.

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Everyone knows that there's massive commits happening

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out there between Amazon, Microsoft, Google.

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This is like money that is approved to be spent.

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And so, you know, it's no secret.

6:57

Everyone's raising toward,

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"Hey, how can I tap into some of that money?"

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But to your point, it's not that simple, right?

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You actually have to start with a fundamental

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go-to-market and route to market

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that makes sense for your business.

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You have established this at a startup, i.e. Rubric,

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and then a larger established company, like Veritas as well.

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And you have to think about what a win is

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for your company first, right?

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And by that, I mean, you have to understand

7:23

what your route to market is and the components of it.

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So you might have a large direct sales force.

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You might be getting leads from, say, marketing

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and system integrators,

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or you might be having a two-tier channel model

7:35

with distribution in it still.

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There's a variety in companies go-to-markets

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and how they approach their own route to market.

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It's super important to anchor on first

7:45

because the goal isn't just selling through the marketplace.

7:48

The goal is actually to increase sales velocity,

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you know, decrease cost per sale, right?

7:53

Increase deal size, fundamentally modernize

7:57

and make a world-class route to market

7:59

for your own company, leveraging the cloud go-to-market.

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And so there's some science in that,

8:04

there's some art in it, I'm happy to go through it.

8:06

The net is that you gotta understand

8:07

what my channel model looked like,

8:09

what's my system integrator model look like,

8:10

what's my direct sale model look like,

8:13

how are they all compensated,

8:14

what's that current flow, how's it working,

8:17

and how can we make it better?

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And I really have a deep understanding of that

8:20

with interlock, importantly,

8:21

across all the line of business leaders of your company

8:24

to go and add this secret sauce

8:27

to cloud go-to-market marketplace to the mix

8:29

to really up-level the game

8:30

and create a bunch of new logos and wins

8:32

and drive ARR through the model.

8:34

Internal anchoring on your route to market

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and making it better, that's where you start.

8:38

That's an important key because, yes,

8:41

going to market with the clouds

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and cloud go-to-market is an additional route to market

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for your organization.

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But just because it's an additional route to market

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doesn't mean it should be different

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than the way you are selling

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and how you are trying to unlock your ARR

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and your ARR growth.

9:03

So it needs to be integrated into the way you do business

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and how you guys think about going to market

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and your market space and your customers and your channel,

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but it is its own thing as well.

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So I think that's where a lot of times,

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I see partners not make that connection of like,

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oh, we have to integrate this into how we do business

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as another route.

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So I still have to treat this thing individually

9:31

and separate, but also integrate into the way we do business

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so that it doesn't feel like this thing that's been bolted on

9:40

and it's this extra weird motion that we're doing, right?

9:45

- Yeah, but no business has cycles

9:47

for a completely separate sidecar in their to market.

9:51

You have to make the whole motorcycle faster

9:53

and better in the first place.

9:54

And so we want one plus one equals 10.

9:57

We already have one plus one equals two

9:58

with whatever the current route to market is,

10:00

probably direct and some sort of combination

10:02

of SI in channel, right?

10:03

We want to amplify all that to make it 10 with the cloud.

10:06

It's a secret sauce is going to up level your route to market

10:09

and a lot of it's added in, right?

10:10

So there is definitely ARR growth with it as well.

10:13

- Okay.

10:15

So you're going to go create a world class route to market.

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What's the first thing you look to really unlock

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this go to market motion?

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- The first thing you got to understand is product market fit.

10:27

And so you got to put a little bit of your PM hat on,

10:29

if you will, think about,

10:31

hey, how does my product affect folks

10:34

that are trying to move to cloud or use cloud?

10:37

You know, migrating to cloud has been a theme

10:39

that's important for Amazon and Microsoft forever.

10:42

But increasingly the last couple of years,

10:44

it's not just about migrating to the cloud as destination.

10:47

It's like cloud is where business is done period, right?

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So when you think about your products is like,

10:51

hey, how could my product drive cloud consumption?

10:54

How does it fit in this ecosystem

10:56

that the cloud sellers care about?

10:57

Whether that's a migration story,

10:59

whether that's just, hey, a use case in the cloud story,

11:01

whatever the case is,

11:02

there's a million different business use cases around the cloud.

11:05

You just have to understand,

11:06

hey, what's my company's core value to the cloud

11:09

at a, say, brand and value prop level?

11:12

And then at a click below that,

11:13

it's important to go in and understand some of the math

11:17

on how the actual consumption

11:18

and I would say cloud consumption works

11:20

because it's important that you know

11:22

how much you matter to the cloud.

11:24

Are you just a bit of a brand value

11:25

or are you actually driving meaningful consumption?

11:27

- One of the things that has been part of rubrics

11:31

like success is their ability to tie themselves

11:35

to that consumption.

11:36

And now you're at Veritas and you're thinking about,

11:39

I need to understand my product market fit.

11:42

I need to understand our consumption story

11:45

and I need to know the numbers behind that story.

11:48

But I also need to tie myself

11:50

so that the clouds know, oh, it's rubric.

11:54

Oh, it's Veritas that is driving this consumption.

11:58

- Such a key point

12:00

'cause it's not enough to have a great value prop

12:02

or have just a great SaaS that happens to run on Amazon

12:05

or happens to run on Microsoft or Google, right?

12:07

All those things are core MVP requirements

12:11

to play the game, but they're not what makes you successful.

12:13

So out of the gate, you have to have product market fit.

12:16

You have to have the SaaS running.

12:17

You gotta be driving consumption.

12:19

But it's not enough.

12:20

You actually have to drive scale

12:22

and a meaningful impact in consumption

12:24

that's measurable over a long period of time.

12:27

And so this is where CoSEL really becomes a thing

12:30

and all the value that Core Plus historically had

12:33

and now tackle with CoSEL managed services comes in.

12:36

If you don't have Eurobrew to market locked in

12:38

where you're at scale, driving as much of your install base

12:42

toward the cloud and having that be recognized

12:45

actually is consumption when that happens

12:47

within your missing 80% of the trick

12:48

that is engaging together.

12:50

'Cause if you don't do that,

12:51

then you don't show up for a brand perspective

12:53

and the dashboards that matter for all the cloud sellers.

12:56

And ultimately, we're having a lot of first conversations

12:59

with the sellers that Amazon or Microsoft for years

13:02

when you should be having first conversations once

13:05

and then you've got the scalable system

13:07

that is actually driving consumption in a measurable way

13:10

with the cloud providers.

13:11

And so you're having that second and third conversation

13:14

and meaningful sales interactions,

13:16

after a handful of months.

13:17

But it does take time and repetition and commitment.

13:19

And so this CoSEL motion with Call of Good America

13:22

is super foundational, both to get started

13:24

and then also of course to steal the thing

13:26

for success over time.

13:28

That establishing foundation phase

13:30

of laying all this groundwork,

13:32

knowing your consumption story,

13:34

making sure you have a product market fit.

13:35

Like those are key pillars we keep hearing.

13:37

And obviously you saw a ton of success doing that.

13:41

And as you mentioned, scale

13:43

and you're talking about how do we look at now

13:46

framing ourselves up to be scalable.

13:48

What did you look at, Rubrik?

13:49

And what are you looking at now at Veritas

13:51

to help you evaluate, hey, we know we've got

13:54

a good foundation now, then we're moving

13:56

on to the next phase.

13:57

We need to look at scale.

13:58

Like what does that look like for you all?

14:00

And what do you look at next?

14:02

If I'm an ISV listening to this

14:04

and I'm just laying my foundation,

14:06

how do I know when it's time to start to scale?

14:07

Like what to you is the key triggers to look for

14:10

and where we want to go next?

14:12

Yeah, when you think about scale,

14:13

there's a couple of components.

14:15

One is net impact you can have to the cloud

14:18

in terms of consumption.

14:18

So what's the dollar amount that I could drive globally,

14:21

right through our partnership and joint sales.

14:24

Another one is volume.

14:25

How much volume do I as nice you have today?

14:27

If I'm a startup and I think of Rubrik

14:29

when we were just getting going,

14:30

it was a hobby in 20 mil company.

14:33

It was not a large company by any means,

14:35

but nevertheless, there was a volume of transactions

14:38

that we could start to build a foundation on.

14:40

So you got to look at like,

14:41

how much volume can I bring to the table?

14:43

If I actually connected by recurrent route

14:45

to marketing with the clouds,

14:48

what does that volume look like globally?

14:49

So knowing that the Americas is typically the strongest

14:52

followed by UK and Europe and APJ, right?

14:55

You got to look globally and understand,

14:56

hey, what's the volume of transactions

14:58

that I think I could drive?

15:00

And beyond the volume of transactions,

15:02

what's the actual amount of cloud or revenue

15:04

that I think I could drive?

15:05

And you have to understand like how that fits in again

15:08

with a product market fit, back to that say,

15:10

hey, I'm going to be driving, you know, 150 mil of product A,

15:14

right?

15:15

That could actually have a drag of an additional 40 mil

15:18

of cloud consumption with it.

15:19

So you're going to do some of that math

15:20

across the total impact of consumption as well as volume.

15:24

If you've got the product market fit

15:26

and you've got scale in terms of, you know,

15:28

sales reps in the field, volume of deals happening,

15:31

there's a real opportunity to go

15:32

and swing a bigger bat with the clouds

15:34

to actually have a real meaningful go-to-market around it.

15:37

And so there's different strategies you can take

15:39

when you're coming up as an ISV

15:40

to kind of get your wins and pockets and verticals

15:43

where you have six success.

15:44

And then when you achieve scale,

15:46

you can really fire on all cylinders.

15:48

And you can start talking like go on

15:49

picking your top five verticals

15:50

and picking your regions to really double down

15:52

and on events and things.

15:54

I had a great leader at rubric actually.

15:56

We talked about value exchange.

15:57

You have to understand what you are bringing to the table

15:59

so you get a mutual value exchange

16:01

that put net positive for the partnership.

16:03

And once you lock on that,

16:04

do deep enablement internally,

16:06

enable them with the cloud provider

16:08

and have a lot of success in the field with it.

16:11

>> I remember like at rubric,

16:13

that was like one of our strategies

16:16

and how we got Microsoft's attention so quickly

16:21

was we had a value of business to bring.

16:24

We had a significant amount of customers

16:27

that we wanted to align with Microsoft on.

16:31

And so we put all of those customers into CoSAL

16:34

and we just started having like tons and tons

16:37

of who we are, what we do conversations.

16:40

And by the end of that first year of co-selling

16:44

with Microsoft, we were in the top 10,

16:47

maybe even like the top five,

16:48

my memory serves me right, of like ISVs

16:52

co-selling with Microsoft.

16:54

And that really helped elevate rubric

16:57

to the next level inside their partnership to say,

17:00

okay, now how can we continue to invest more in rubric

17:05

and rubric wanting to invest more

17:06

in the Microsoft partnership as well?

17:09

>> That was a fun example where a good product market

17:12

that good hungry sales force and flexibility

17:15

in root to market that allowed a pivot

17:17

in an attach to this cloud go to market

17:19

and we had a ton of success on it.

17:21

So I think that's a really good sort of coming up story

17:23

for ISVs that are thinking about it.

17:25

And then yeah, with Veritas,

17:26

it's been an even stronger, you know, acceleration

17:30

than we had at rubric because with Veritas,

17:32

it's an established larger company more scale globally, right?

17:36

And large customer.

17:37

And on top of that, like there's such a strong

17:40

both new business and renewal business motion.

17:42

We can talk more about this, but it's interesting.

17:44

But like there's definitely motions you can create

17:46

for your renewal business and for new business,

17:48

both which drive cloud consumption and both

17:51

with your eligible for marketplace

17:52

and both have a lot of value exchange

17:54

around them for ARR.

17:56

>> Well, I think that is interesting

17:57

'cause like at rubric, it was a startup.

17:59

You're just getting everything started.

18:01

We even thought about like,

18:02

how do we build the gooid into the rubric

18:06

so that every time rubric lit up inside someone's,

18:10

you know, cloud environment, it talked back and said,

18:12

hey, we're a rubric, we're the ones driving this consumption.

18:15

So we really tied ourselves to that story.

18:17

We're at Veritas, you're now in an established organization.

18:21

So rubric, we're building, Veritas, we're transforming.

18:27

We have this renewal base that we can also look at

18:30

for a route to market or a co-style, you know, play around.

18:35

>> Yeah, and the flexibility you had a rubric

18:39

with now contrasting with the kind of enterprise size

18:42

of Veritas also has to lend a lot, you know,

18:44

to what Aaron said, there's some transformation in there

18:47

which I know is probably something that,

18:50

I know we spend a lot of time talking to our ISVs around

18:52

is like, this is really a transformative activity.

18:55

You've done a lot of the right things at rubric.

18:58

You have all those trophies to prove it

19:00

from a co-sale perspective as well.

19:01

And then you came into Veritas with a lot of those lessons

19:05

learned but moving into a big enterprise.

19:07

What are some of the things you've done differently

19:09

to help approach Veritas and really try and fast track

19:12

some of that transformation?

19:14

Do you have any tips or lessons that you learned

19:17

reflecting on these two different type of organizations

19:20

and how you were able to unlock Cloud Go to Market?

19:24

>> Yeah, for sure.

19:25

So I think one of the things back to understanding

19:27

the value for your own company at the beginning

19:29

is to understand what are we trying to do?

19:31

Are we really going for new logos?

19:33

Or are we driving ARR lift to our base or install base?

19:38

Are we doing both, right?

19:39

What reasons are we going after?

19:41

You have a deep understanding and deep interlock

19:43

with the different leaders of your company around

19:46

what is our business imperative?

19:48

Maybe it is reducing cost to sale but not growing it up.

19:51

So there's a variety you get in companies

19:53

at different phases of maturity, right?

19:55

And I'd say with Veritas, one thing that's great

19:57

about the scale here is that a large percentage

20:01

of businesses renewal.

20:02

So this is business that's probably going to come in

20:05

even if no one touches the thing, right?

20:08

Veritas is a great product, a lot of happy customers,

20:10

large renewal business.

20:12

Well, it can roll bigger, it can roll faster

20:15

if you start tapping into the marketplace and cost sale.

20:17

And so what we found is that our renewal business,

20:20

our largest renewals happen faster when we can leverage

20:25

cost sale and leverage the marketplace to get the deal done.

20:28

That's sort of a unique thing to renewals

20:29

where typically the renewal game is almost feels like,

20:32

you know, a doctor's visit you've been putting off

20:34

for three years or something, right?

20:36

>> You said it, right?

20:37

So you've got this renewal base and they're your customers.

20:40

They're going to renew.

20:41

They love Veritas.

20:42

They're happy.

20:43

The play isn't to like make sure you renew those customers.

20:47

The play is, can I bring down my cost of operations,

20:52

my cost of sales on this book of business?

20:56

And one of the ways to do that is to do that

20:59

through the marketplace because the deals happen faster.

21:02

They take less of legal's time and they can be

21:06

exponentially larger because now you're tapping

21:08

into a different budget and a budget that's probably

21:11

even bigger so that you could do a multi-year deal

21:15

and even pull in that revenue sooner than later, right?

21:19

So now the renewal play is around improving your cost

21:24

of sales and speeding up that sales cycle.

21:29

>> I mean, there's not a lot of churn,

21:30

but there's some churn.

21:32

And so we reduce our churn and we grow our deal size.

21:35

And so the fit for that renewal business is different

21:38

than what you do for new business.

21:39

And so, Patrick, to your question, what's different

21:42

or what's part of the key is, you have to understand

21:44

like this renewal business is a major and unique motion

21:48

of AR for the company and we're going to attach a model

21:50

that works for them.

21:51

And then we're going to separately attach a model

21:53

that works for our new business.

21:54

Folks going after a new logo and really growing new

21:57

software sales, new SAS sales.

21:59

So internally, Veritas, we actually have two different

22:02

co-sell emotions where we do different things

22:05

at different times for the renewal business

22:07

and the new business.

22:08

The net, though, is the same where we want to get leverage

22:11

from the cloud sellers and we want to decrease our cost

22:14

of sale, err, into your point, grow our ARR.

22:17

And ultimately, the cherry on top is transacting this thing

22:20

through the marketplace.

22:22

>> And I think that's smart and that's the right way to go.

22:24

These are valuable routes to market,

22:26

but a lot of times we run into ISV starting out.

22:31

I'm really trying to get buy-in from the CRO

22:32

to go take renewals down this path.

22:35

And you always run into the objections of like,

22:37

well, we're taking another percentage off renewals.

22:39

Why would we want to do that?

22:40

And we've already got a bunch of headcount

22:42

and you get into the whole discussion of,

22:44

well, do we have less renewals, folks,

22:46

to take deals through marketplace

22:47

because they become easier and faster

22:49

and they can really open up a big can of worms

22:52

with a lot of CROs and CEOs in some of the smaller companies.

22:55

But even at large companies,

22:57

you're still looking at a big chunk of business

22:59

that some would argue it's already going through

23:02

the process.

23:03

We're not having a lot of competitors in there.

23:05

Why would I implement something different?

23:07

When you reflect back on your conversations internally

23:10

at rubric and now at Baratas,

23:13

how did you ensure strong alignment across

23:16

the different stakeholders internally,

23:18

CRO just being one of them,

23:20

but how did you ensure that you had alignment

23:22

from everyone to go implement this

23:25

and really come to the table with,

23:28

we've got a solid plan.

23:29

We're going to do these two things differently.

23:31

Like what did that look like for you?

23:32

- It's more of a Baratas story than rubric on this one

23:34

because rubric is really about new logo, new business,

23:37

growth, right?

23:38

So that was super heavy on that side.

23:39

And then for the renewal business,

23:41

well, with Baratas, it's both new and renew together, right?

23:43

And so getting alignment across,

23:46

you nailed it.

23:46

CRO is super, super important,

23:48

but it's not just the CRO.

23:50

It's super important to have C-suite

23:52

and VP level interlock, right?

23:54

So as a leader, it's my job to go and make sure

23:58

that like I am on path 100% with our CROs initiative

24:02

per region, right?

24:03

And then the same thing with the CMO, right?

24:05

So as we think about what go to market

24:07

and activities look like,

24:08

make sure that we're adding value in the right way

24:10

to things that really move the needle for CMO and CRO.

24:14

And then even when you go across the suite to like say,

24:16

product, product care is about driving product sales

24:20

and doing it at a lower cost, right?

24:22

And the product margins at the end of the day, right?

24:25

For sales.

24:26

And so the ability for us to impact all three of those things,

24:29

like ARR growth with the CRO,

24:32

brand growth and marketing and event ROI with the CMO.

24:35

And then product margins, right?

24:37

For the PM team, it is super important.

24:39

You have to have that interlock with the leaders

24:41

to understand how their businesses go

24:43

and what they want to do.

24:44

'Cause the reality is,

24:45

CoSEL and Marketplace improves all three of those things.

24:48

It's gonna drive more ARR, right?

24:50

It's gonna do at a lower cost of sale.

24:52

We're gonna have a great ROI and events we do in marketing.

24:55

And then from a product margin perspective,

24:58

our Veritas story is really interesting

24:59

'cause you know, there's a lot of people keep in town

25:01

with money we're making on every deal

25:03

and the margin on every deal with Veritas.

25:05

And for good reason, right?

25:06

It's an established business with, you know,

25:08

the three product lines that drive a ton of revenue.

25:11

And so we did analysis when I was bringing a tackle

25:14

in initially on the marketplace side

25:16

for Veritas around CoSEL and EBITDA.

25:20

And we actually found that compared to Veritas's current

25:23

route to market, going through the marketplace

25:26

would actually reduce CoSEL and improve our EBITDA

25:29

by somewhere between half a point to one and half points.

25:32

Worst case were, we're saving half a point.

25:35

And in many cases, it would actually save us

25:36

15 points on a deal, right?

25:39

So worst case, you're making money.

25:40

Best case, you're making, you know, 10, 15 points

25:43

better margin per transaction.

25:45

And so you have to go through that with finance

25:47

and through the booking process.

25:49

You have to get in the weeds of that.

25:51

So, but having done that, then we have a very strong

25:53

conversation, change is often not good

25:56

for a business that's doing well, right?

25:57

At least for leaders that like the machine running it

26:00

as it is.

26:00

And so you have to add value to their machine, right?

26:02

And you have to understand deeply the financial impact

26:05

you're going to have as well.

26:06

And so I would encourage anyone watching this to go in

26:09

and look at the cost of sale and look at the margin stack,

26:13

look at the EBITDA and like really, really do the math

26:16

to understand what the net, net impact of a marketplace

26:18

transaction is.

26:19

Ververa, CoSEL turned out to be positive,

26:21

to very positive in many cases.

26:23

- My former colleagues all just perked up with the EBITDA

26:26

and the margin conversation.

26:28

I know there was a lot of reporting we had to do.

26:30

So that's awesome.

26:31

That's a great story because a lot of companies

26:33

don't look at it that way.

26:34

And they're just immediately saying,

26:36

I have to take one to 3% off of all these renewals

26:39

and that's going to cut my margins.

26:40

And they're not considering the advantages

26:43

and the positives coming in there.

26:44

So that's a good story.

26:45

- Yeah, no doubt.

26:46

This is a conversation I had with CEO,

26:48

the whole C-suite leadership teams.

26:50

And so we anchored this the first three months,

26:52

I was at Veritas to look at all the business.

26:54

And it's been about a year and a half since that happened.

26:57

And now we're in this core scale mode, right?

26:59

But I probably should have mentioned that earlier.

27:01

It's super important to go and do that early work

27:03

and anchor both on the business financially,

27:05

as well as each one of the leaders.

27:07

So you know what's important for each business

27:09

that you're to win with the cloud too.

27:11

- And it's not an exercise you do once

27:13

and you're like, you're done, right?

27:14

You've got to kind of keep this alignment

27:17

and keep in lockstep with the business.

27:20

Can you walk us through some like specific things

27:23

you've been doing over this last year and a half

27:26

to maintain alignment at Veritas?

27:29

- Yeah, well, there's all changed at any company.

27:31

Change at Rubric, I think we had four CROs

27:33

in about four years there.

27:34

And that's just one role,

27:36

the whole org changed considerably, right?

27:38

And so there's always change in your own company.

27:40

Now with Veritas, there's been, I would say less change,

27:43

but we're actually going through a merger

27:45

and acquisition as well,

27:46

which is gonna grow us into you

27:47

by a very long stretch of the market leader in this space.

27:50

So that's exciting and that's change ongoing now.

27:53

And if there's always internal change,

27:54

there's also always change with the cloud provider.

27:56

So we can talk about both sides of that.

27:58

So staying oriented with the cloud provider

28:01

as they evolve annually and then internally,

28:04

we're gonna have one on ones with each C-suite,

28:06

the matters and frankly,

28:08

invite them to our party.

28:10

So I run say cloud, business meetings

28:13

and marketplace performance meetings monthly and quarterly.

28:17

And we bring all the folks to our party, right?

28:21

And share our challenges, our successes.

28:23

And ultimately it comes down to smart business planning

28:26

where when you become a good business partner

28:29

with the CMO and the CRO and the various stakeholders, right?

28:33

Well, then as they think about their priorities,

28:36

they're thinking about this awesome tool

28:37

that they didn't have in the past,

28:39

called Cloud Go to Market, to leverage to grow.

28:41

And so I'll tell you some specifics for Veritas

28:45

is that when we came out of our fiscal year

28:48

and air growth and competitively winning

28:51

was the job one, right?

28:54

Well, knowing that and that's gonna inform

28:56

all the enableant we do and all the route to market,

28:58

we do, we do, and all this event,

29:00

like it's very easy for me to didn't attach the cloud

29:03

go to market that we do to help drive

29:05

a shark or competitive angle on what we do.

29:07

And in attacking the right segment of accounts,

29:10

right for growth as well in the right verticals specifically.

29:13

And so this is planning with the company leaders

29:16

and then I guess having the ability to very quickly,

29:19

or sometimes in the moment,

29:21

attach the couple different levers that you could have

29:23

in your Cloud Go to Market toolkit,

29:25

I am gonna go after the healthcare vertical

29:28

or a FinCER vertical or manufacturing vertical.

29:31

And I'm gonna do it when we're at stage two

29:33

to achieve this business outcome that we want.

29:35

And by the way, because we wanna be really sharp

29:38

on these two competitors,

29:39

we're gonna make sure that we are loading up

29:41

our joint message for that first call

29:42

with the cloud provider in a very scripted specific way

29:45

so that we set the table appropriately

29:47

when we're going into this segment of accounts

29:48

in this quarter with these two competitors in mind.

29:51

So some of this is just sort of a sharp

29:53

internal business planning,

29:54

but you have to have that maturity of what you can bring

29:57

to the table with the cloud provider

29:59

to really have the strongest impact.

30:01

It's not a one and done either, right?

30:02

It's like, this happens quarterly.

30:05

So it's like you gotta be in the quarterly business planning.

30:07

This is the thing that goes on forever

30:09

and that's how you win and win bigger.

30:11

- Right, and I love that mindset

30:13

that you shared with the audience,

30:15

which is do this my business planning,

30:17

but you are their partner.

30:19

Like how can I partner with my CMO?

30:22

How can I partner with my CRO?

30:25

And while I'm partnering with them

30:26

and I'm a tool for them,

30:28

I'm one of their strategies for them,

30:31

I too still need to own my business

30:35

and have my own QBR

30:37

and keep everybody in the organization

30:40

apprised of the success we cloud alliances

30:44

are having and how we're partnering

30:48

with each of the teams in the organization

30:50

and the overall success that the cloud alliance is having.

30:54

I think that's really important.

30:55

I think sometimes people think about just that one,

30:58

like I've got to build this cloud alliance,

31:01

go to market strategy

31:03

and you've created it in isolation versus,

31:07

I need to go partner with different teams

31:10

in my organization.

31:12

And then I need to show them how I can be part of that strategy,

31:16

stay part of their strategy

31:17

and the way I stay part of their strategy is

31:20

I'm adding value and I'm communicating

31:22

and I'm sharing that value that I'm driving

31:25

with them and for them.

31:27

I think that that's definitely an aha moment

31:30

in hearing you tell the story

31:31

to like really crystallize that point.

31:36

The other thing that I think might be notable

31:38

for some of your audiences is that at Veritas,

31:40

I have three different teams I run

31:42

and we do it intentionally

31:44

because it helps add more value to the company.

31:47

And one is actually a marketplace business ops team

31:50

which is, hey, the team that actually makes

31:51

the marketplace listings go,

31:52

partners with tackle very closely,

31:55

thinks about how we book orders,

31:56

how we do like Rep comp,

31:58

how deals get done and quotes get done.

32:00

Like a marketplace sort of operations team

32:02

is one thing and that's really providing us service

32:05

to the business around doing deals, right?

32:06

And is co-sell in there too?

32:07

Is it like marketplace and co-sell operations?

32:10

Separate actually, yeah.

32:11

So this is more internal focus on like,

32:13

we have to make a center of excellence for us

32:16

as a company transacting through marketplace

32:18

like a first, say first class that is in

32:20

a writing first class on an airplane, right?

32:22

This is not a side card to the root of market.

32:24

You know, this is central to how we're gonna grow our business.

32:27

And so there's a lot of things that have to happen with that.

32:29

How do we do quotes?

32:30

How do we book orders?

32:32

And we had company with Veritas

32:33

with many different product lines.

32:34

How do you quotes is not as simple?

32:36

There's no simple answer to that.

32:37

There's like five different answers.

32:38

And so, hey, how do we create a center of excellence

32:40

around how we do quotes and how we book orders

32:42

and how we do a nail in it for it.

32:44

There's a job in itself of like making marketplace

32:46

a real thing, right, for a company.

32:49

That's one.

32:49

And then a separate team that does alliances.

32:52

And this is the team that does focus on,

32:54

hey, am I on all the right programs?

32:55

Or they Amazon with Microsoft, with Google, right?

32:58

Am I checking all the boxes and all the funding we can get?

33:01

And are we doing all the things to engage

33:03

with the right leaders at the right time?

33:05

And are we actually doing co-sell

33:06

and locking in this skill, co-sell model effectively,

33:10

right across the company?

33:11

So that's the core alliances team.

33:13

And they really do end to end

33:14

like how we talk to the right product teams too.

33:15

So there's sort of like a little bit of a DM hat

33:17

that the alliances team functions on for the business.

33:20

And then the third one is really the go-to-market team.

33:23

And that's the part where you once you get lock in for scale,

33:26

that's where you can really have the most tangible impact

33:29

because the go-to-market team is the one that actually drives,

33:32

the deal connections deeply gets in the weeds on co-sell.

33:35

You do drives all the sales rigor around connecting on deals,

33:39

winning on deals, driving sales strategy,

33:41

driving the marketplace sales number, right?

33:43

So you get this sort of match,

33:44

I would go the teams differently

33:45

on different pieces of the business.

33:47

But having those discrete lines of business

33:49

has been really helpful at Veritas

33:51

because it's let us go create excellence for marketplace

33:54

as a function inside the company

33:55

that matters and works at the end of the day.

33:57

'Cause if a rest of LA sucks on marketplace,

33:58

then we're gonna wanna eat that meal from a sales perspective.

34:01

And then having an excellent excellence on alliances

34:03

to go and be world class in every possible way

34:05

with all the club providers.

34:07

And then have a team focused on the actual go-to-market

34:09

to drive co-sell and marketplace wins

34:11

and really have that ARR growth impact

34:14

that ISV using established companies all want to get.

34:17

- You've established the dream

34:19

of so many cloud alliance people.

34:21

- At what point do I start creating these three teams?

34:25

Is it like you create these three teams out of the gate

34:28

and they're just like one person.

34:31

And then like as you kind of grow your business

34:33

and drive adoption and scale adoption,

34:35

you just keep adding more people into those teams

34:38

or like did you start with one team

34:41

and then build out the next team

34:42

and then build out the next team

34:44

depending on the growth that you are seeing.

34:48

- It's alliances first, marketplace second

34:51

and then the go-to-market third, right?

34:52

If you don't have this strong alliances foundation

34:55

to be on all the programs

34:56

and do any important part of work,

34:57

that's your anchoring on reality and partnership strengths, right?

35:01

So you gotta have that as your growth engine.

35:03

And then once you get that going,

35:05

as long as the companies wants to grow here

35:07

or do it at a lower cost of sale and get new logos,

35:09

well, it probably makes sense to click

35:11

on this marketplace function.

35:12

Some companies may already have marketplace running.

35:14

I have it on my team because it's so central

35:17

to how we go win as a company.

35:18

And you could have marketplace running

35:20

on some other BizOps team or something, right?

35:23

But more important than where it reports

35:25

is like the function that it serves

35:26

and that it's effective, right?

35:28

So, but alliances first for sure.

35:30

You got the marketplace function going.

35:32

And then with success and with sort of a product market fit

35:35

and scale and strategy lock-in

35:37

that we've talked about earlier on this session,

35:39

well, if you're ready to go,

35:41

you gotta bring some talent

35:43

and scale to go to market side and win.

35:45

And I would say that's probably the most important piece

35:49

to get right 'cause you gotta have the right personality

35:51

that's both very aggressive

35:52

but also very strong like partner centric person,

35:55

you know, someone with patience,

35:56

knocking the door over five to seven times

35:58

and get five to seven notes.

35:59

But also someone that can go talk to leadership teams

36:02

and set the vision and tell them what good looks like, right?

36:04

So really it takes a dynamic leader

36:06

to be some of the early leaders on the go-to-market side

36:08

to both do the hard work and do all the heavy lifting

36:12

and then also set the vision and set the leadership alignment

36:15

along with myself.

36:16

- Well, I love this conversation.

36:18

And as we're coming to an end of our time,

36:21

I wanna leave the audience with some advice

36:25

or tell us like, what big bets are you continuing

36:29

to invest in in order to continue unlocking

36:33

your cloud go-to-market strategy

36:35

and your cloud partnerships?

36:37

- It's more of a long-term thinking strategy, right?

36:41

We're trying to be very like long-term oriented

36:43

in our decision-making and the bets that we do make,

36:46

knowing that you do have to knock in the door seven times

36:48

to get it to go.

36:49

And when you're a company the size of Veritas,

36:52

this is a bit turning the Titanic

36:54

and then putting a better engine on it

36:56

so it goes faster.

36:56

Like those things are all great,

36:58

but they don't happen overnight

36:59

and they also don't go away overnight.

37:00

So long-term thinking is a big one, right?

37:03

And it's both for internal company evolution

37:06

as well as staying aligned to the cloud partners

37:08

because the reality is Amazon changes their marketplace

37:11

and co-sell policies at least every year.

37:14

Microsoft does as well.

37:15

Microsoft sometimes gets interesting

37:17

and does things twice a year

37:18

or just incrementally throughout the year changes.

37:21

And so one thing that's super, super important

37:23

to maintain success over time is how does mindset

37:26

that is in some ways infinite,

37:28

Aaron, I know you said infinite mindset,

37:30

but for me it's like it's long-term thinking

37:32

and knowing that the art of winning isn't around doing,

37:35

listening to what we talked about on this

37:36

and then doing a copying that,

37:38

it's staying very attuned to how the cloud companies

37:41

are evolving their own rich market,

37:43

how they're copying their sellers, right?

37:45

What their programs look like

37:46

and how you ultimately can help them be successful

37:49

yourself and then also, you know,

37:51

by directionally how that relationship can be

37:53

as symbiotic to help your sellers increase value

37:56

in our deals.

37:57

If you stay anchored on that being the North Star,

37:59

then, you know, as veritas and our merger,

38:02

it goes through like we're gonna have incredible success

38:05

internally and we're also gonna stay laser locked in

38:08

with both Amazon and Microsoft and Google

38:10

right in their programs.

38:11

And I would say like partnering with Hankel

38:13

is probably shouldn't skip saying that either

38:15

because one of the value that you guys have

38:17

is both on CoSEL as well as on Marketplace,

38:20

there's no one that's more tapped into the changing landscape

38:23

of cloud go to market, whether it's Marketplace, CoSEL,

38:26

right, just in general, right,

38:28

you guys are super tapped in there, it's the tackle thing,

38:30

it's the cloud thing and then it's all your own

38:31

internal stakeholders.

38:33

You just gotta stay like locked into evolution

38:35

and growth as a mindset.

38:36

>> Yeah, we help you guys stay on top of all those changes.

38:40

And we also provide that like consistency.

38:44

Like we are there as your cloud go to market platform

38:48

and as the organization expands and extracts

38:51

and merges and acquisitions happen

38:53

and things change, people change inside the organization.

38:58

The one thing that is considering consistent

39:00

is tackles here as your partner

39:03

and your cloud go to market operations platforms

39:06

so that that can stay consistent.

39:08

As the people come in and out of the organization,

39:12

your operations can stay on and stay consistent

39:15

throughout your journey.

39:17

>> I couldn't be more excited to be partnering with tackle

39:20

and with the cloud providers, the next say 12, 24 months

39:23

because Marketplace is as big as it is,

39:27

and some ways it's just getting started.

39:29

And you look at the like 600, 700, 800 billion dollars

39:33

of committed money that's gonna be spent

39:34

the next couple of years, it's sizable

39:36

and it's accelerating, right?

39:38

So there's such a growing opportunity for ISB broadly,

39:41

think about evolving their business.

39:43

And for tackle too, there's a huge, huge opportunity

39:45

to keep winning and playing the game better

39:47

than others out there.

39:49

We really appreciate the partnership.

39:50

>> And we're excited to do it with you.

39:51

So thank you for your partnership and leaning on us

39:55

and allowing us to kind of be there to help you

39:57

in your journey.

39:59

I so appreciate your time, Shane.

40:01

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us

40:04

and with our audience, so many things to learn

40:07

from your experiences.

40:09

>> My pleasure, Erin.

40:09

Great to talk with you and you as well, Patrick.

40:12

>> Awesome, thanks, Shane.

40:14

Head of Global Cloud, go to market,

40:15

business development and alliances at Veritas.

40:18

This was an episode of unlock cloud go to market.

40:22

I'm your co-host Patrick Riley.

40:24

I'm your co-host, Erin Feiger.

40:26

>> And thanks for joining.

40:28

>> Erin, I love that episode.

40:29

I'm so glad you brought Shane on.

40:30

That was such a great addition to this podcast

40:32

and you've known him for such a long time.

40:34

And you both have money trees, which I'm jealous

40:36

'cause I've got this fake little tree

40:38

from Amazon in the background.

40:40

And I need to be as cool as both of you.

40:42

>> Yeah, and I'm glad I learned that like money trees

40:44

are hardy because I do not have a green thumb

40:47

and I'm so nervous.

40:48

I feel like it's bad juju if I let this money tree die.

40:53

>> All right, so besides the fact that Shane and I

40:55

both have money trees, what was an aha moment

40:58

that you had in listening to Shane's story?

41:01

>> Yeah, for me, there was a couple big ahas,

41:05

but the two that I loved, the biggest takeaways

41:08

were that he had the three teams.

41:09

He's got the dream team.

41:11

He's got the dream job for an alliances

41:12

for in cloud go to market, right?

41:14

With the BizOps team focused on all the Rev Rack,

41:17

the quote to cash process, managing the business,

41:20

the alliances team, driving kind of the overlay, if you will,

41:24

working the partnerships and then the go to market team

41:27

who I think is more like that sales oriented.

41:30

Like for me, the big aha was someone nailed it

41:32

and they did it the right way there.

41:34

And the other big one for me was the renewals,

41:38

that conversation and how they're looking at using renewals

41:41

as another route to market and they got that by.

41:43

And those were two very exciting things for me.

41:45

>> And he took the time in the beginning

41:47

to really understand the business,

41:51

how he could align inside the business

41:54

and then went and did the financial exercise

41:57

of truly the benefit that cloud go to market

42:02

could have inside of the organization

42:04

given their company, given the way they're going to market,

42:07

given their customer base and their products, right?

42:12

And because he took that time, now he's going fast, right?

42:17

It's like you got to go slow to go fast

42:20

and he really understood the financial impact.

42:23

And when he knew the financial impact,

42:25

then going and getting those stakeholders

42:28

and starting to build those three teams was like,

42:32

easy buy in, no brainer, go invest in that

42:35

because we've done this financial model

42:37

that tells us our IBA does going to be better,

42:40

our time to sales is going to be better,

42:42

we're going to decrease our cost of sales,

42:44

we're going to potentially increase our renewal rates

42:48

and decrease our churn.

42:50

All those financials he did upfront in the beginning

42:54

before he even started building out the team.

42:58

>> Yeah, it's really a great blueprint for success.

43:00

All the things you mentioned,

43:02

the importance of the consumption stories,

43:03

building out the right people and support internally,

43:07

figuring out how they're then going to go scale,

43:09

looking at it through a transformation lens like all of it.

43:12

And then his mindset to be adaptable to the cloud providers

43:16

and get everybody else on board to do that,

43:18

that was pretty cool.

43:19

>> You've got to hire people who also have that same

43:23

growth mindset, know that this is an infinite game

43:27

that you are going to be in.

43:28

And so it's, you got to just keep going and keep at it.

43:33

And it's not like you do this exercise once

43:35

or you say this once you do this enablement once,

43:37

it's like, okay, we've got to always do this

43:40

and we've got to say it over and over again

43:41

we just got to keep working at it.

43:43

And we're going to keep making minor tweaks

43:45

and keep evolving it.

43:46

And until the day we decide like,

43:48

all right, this isn't the route to marketing anymore for us,

43:51

right?

43:52

>> Get on the flywheel.

43:53

Stay tuned. If you haven't watched previous episodes,

43:55

go back and watch those.

43:56

Each week we're going to bring you a new episode

43:58

with new keys, new successes, new aha moments

44:03

and maybe a money tree for me.

44:04

Thank you for watching this week's Unlocked Cloud,

44:09

go to market.

44:10

>> Hi, I'm your co-host Patrick Riley.

44:13

>> And I'm your co-host Aaron Feiger.

44:15

>> See you next time.

44:17

>> So pull up a chair, grab a notebook and join us

44:20

as we share the essential stages of the maturity model

44:22

to start, optimize and grow your company's revenue

44:26

using the cloud.

44:28

For more resources on executing your cloud

44:30

go to market strategy, you can visit our website

44:33

at tackle.io.

44:34

(light music)