How Rapid7 Saw Their Deal Sizes Grow by 3X, Win Rates Increase to 40%, and Sales Cycles Shorten by 21 Days

0:00

If I look back on it, maybe I did it too fast

0:03

because we just got so many new opportunities

0:07

that we couldn't take advantage of

0:09

because there wasn't enough time in the day.

0:11

Managing that many coastal opportunities

0:14

was very, very difficult.

0:16

One of the big reasons that we're talking right now

0:18

with tackle and the folks there is

0:20

we shared so many opportunities

0:23

that not only could we not keep up

0:24

with the activities we were being asked to participate in,

0:27

but we also can keep up with launching deals

0:30

and managing all the day to day

0:31

that came from ACE without, you know,

0:33

to like tackle in the middle.

0:34

Welcome to Unlock Cloud Go-to-Market.

0:40

The series where hosts Aaron Feiger

0:42

and Patrick Riley share the essential stages

0:44

of the Cloud GTM maturity model to start, optimize,

0:48

and grow your company's revenue through the cloud.

0:52

They've helped countless ISVs tackle the ins

0:54

and outs of their Cloud GTM motion

0:57

and in each episode,

0:58

they're sharing those success stories

0:59

from the people who have put them into place.

1:02

Because ultimately, this way of thinking is the future

1:06

and the future is now.

1:08

- Everybody and welcome to another episode

1:12

of Unlock Cloud Go-to-Market.

1:14

Today, Aaron and I are joined by TJ Schmidt,

1:17

the director of Cloud Partnerships at Rapid7

1:21

and you are not gonna wanna miss this episode.

1:23

He talks about how Rapid7 has truly

1:27

unlocked and built their brand such that they're realizing

1:30

the top line revenue metrics from the Cloud providers

1:33

like in increase in deal size,

1:35

the increase win rates and the shorter deal cycles.

1:40

Do not miss out.

1:41

Coastal is behind all of it brand building,

1:45

actually realizing the true value of this

1:47

and Aaron and I are gonna unpack all of that.

1:50

So stay tuned and hear from our new list,

1:52

tackle customer advisory board member, TJ Schmidt.

1:56

- Everybody, welcome to another episode

1:58

of Unlock Cloud Go-to-Market.

2:00

I'm co-host Patrick Riley.

2:02

- I'm co-host Aaron Feiger.

2:04

- And today we are very excited to be joined by TJ Schmidt,

2:06

director of Cloud Partnerships at Rapid7.

2:10

TJ, thank you for joining us today.

2:12

- Thank you very much for having me on here.

2:14

- We're really excited to hear your story

2:16

and before we get into kind of your journey at Rapid7,

2:20

we would love for you to just start by sharing

2:22

a little bit of your background

2:24

and how you came to be the director of Cloud Partnerships

2:27

at Rapid7.

2:28

- Good thing, thank you again for having me.

2:31

I came over to Rapid7 from AWS.

2:34

I was a partner development manager

2:36

and the public sector team for almost two years.

2:39

And then actually prior to that,

2:41

I was part of a team at Igor Micro

2:43

that was responsible for AWS

2:45

that was from about 2014.

2:47

So I've been in the AWS world for almost 10 years now,

2:51

having some capacity with it, typically partner focused,

2:55

never really sitting on this side of the table

2:57

on the ISB Alliance leader side of things.

3:00

But I had taught enough partners how to use AWS,

3:04

how to be proficient in all the ins and outs

3:06

to be successful and what I think is successful

3:08

in the role right now.

3:09

- Okay, TJ, let's start at the very beginning.

3:12

So you come over from AWS

3:14

and you're now at Rapid7.

3:16

How did you initiate your journey

3:20

with your cloud go to market?

3:22

- Yeah, so coming over from AWS into Rapid7,

3:25

there was kind of already a path that had been outlined

3:29

that I was really kind of given to work with.

3:32

And what I wanted to do was take full advantage of that

3:35

and use it to our success.

3:37

And what Rapid7 had aligned with is he's trying to get

3:41

opportunities out of AWS.

3:43

There's tons of materials you can read

3:45

where we wanted AWS to be this opt-generating machine.

3:49

And coming over, I knew that this was gonna be a very hard task

3:54

and it was gonna be a longer term task

3:56

than what we believed it was should have been.

3:59

And what I did was looked at, okay, Koso,

4:02

and in my head, if we're gonna try to get opportunities

4:06

out of AWS, the best way to do that is to grow our mind share.

4:10

And the best way to grow mind share

4:12

is not to just run into AWS offices

4:14

and tell them how great your company is,

4:16

but actually show them how great your company is

4:19

by bringing new customers, having these conversations,

4:22

using each one of those opportunities

4:26

as a way to describe what it is your company does,

4:29

how you help customers, AWS's customer obsession

4:32

is number one leadership principle.

4:34

So now we get to show how we are customer obsessed

4:37

and how we're solving customer challenges.

4:39

And so I went on a journey just co-selling

4:43

and sharing as many opportunities as I possibly could.

4:46

I think we went from 450 before I started to 900 plus

4:51

and we're actually on track now to see a thousand percent growth

4:57

as we finish out the remainder of this year

4:59

from the start of my tenure at Rapid 7 2 now.

5:02

And so we kind of forced that mind share down AWS

5:06

and started, they had no choice,

5:08

but to know who Rapid 7 was

5:10

'cause we were co-selling self-requally with them.

5:12

So you used co-sale as your brand strategy

5:17

to boost your brand inside of AWS

5:20

and to give your organization an opportunity

5:23

to not only tell them who your customers were

5:26

and where you were trying to go to market,

5:28

but your story, like who you are and what you do.

5:32

And what was the expectation of Rapid 7 leadership on,

5:36

well how soon are we gonna see AOs coming in from AWS?

5:41

And was there some expectation setting you needed to do?

5:46

- Yeah, there was definitely some expectation setting

5:48

that I needed to do.

5:49

You know, it was still something that they were trying to toy

5:52

with making goals and responsibilities be specifically AO.

5:57

But what I was able to do is kind of show

5:59

that this is a longer term play.

6:01

And what we needed to do was gain that notoriety

6:04

that mind share from the beginning.

6:07

And then we could start measuring at, okay,

6:09

if we share X amount of opportunities,

6:12

we get Y back from AWS.

6:14

And if we could develop over the course of a period of time,

6:17

some consistency, then it makes us understand, okay,

6:22

here's typically the percentage,

6:24

if we share this many, we're gonna get back this percent.

6:27

And so I was lucky enough to have a company

6:29

that is understanding and trusted my opinion

6:32

and that we have to start at stage one.

6:35

We can't just jump into this and expect the world

6:39

from all different angles.

6:41

Stage one is let's build our brand,

6:44

let's build our mind share,

6:45

and that is just sharing opportunities.

6:47

And then as we see AOs coming back, that's great.

6:50

But the other thing that I'm trying to show them

6:53

over this journey, this two and a half year journey too,

6:55

so my company is that AOs are not the end all be all.

6:59

There's so many other things that we can do

7:02

through our Coastal strategy.

7:04

And what we need to really pay attention to

7:07

is all of these additional benefits and features and programs

7:12

that we can take advantage of, not necessarily AOs.

7:14

Those are kind of a icing on the cake

7:16

when you're going into market.

7:18

- Yeah, Coastal leads to your ability to open up doors

7:22

to have access to other programs and initiatives

7:26

inside of the partnership.

7:27

Not just I give you a deal, you give me a deal.

7:30

- You give me one.

7:32

- Right, so can you share someone,

7:34

you're like early successes at Rapid7

7:36

that you experienced around your Coastal strategy?

7:39

Like what happened?

7:41

Started to share these opportunities,

7:43

and it takes a while for AOs to come in.

7:45

So what did you see as early success indicators?

7:49

- Yeah, so Coastal and just sharing opportunities

7:54

with AWS took off, we were sharing so many,

7:57

we started getting actually too many invites

8:00

to participate in different activities at AWS.

8:03

Lightning rounds with different groups,

8:05

different programs, different marketing initiatives,

8:07

we just were getting inundated, left and right.

8:10

And if I look back on it, maybe I did it too fast

8:15

because we just got so many new opportunities

8:18

that we couldn't take advantage of

8:20

because there wasn't enough time in the day.

8:22

Managing that many Coastal opportunities

8:25

was very, very difficult.

8:27

One of the big reasons that we're talking right now

8:29

with Tackle and the folks there is,

8:31

we shared so many opportunities

8:34

that not only could we not keep up

8:36

with the activities we were being asked to participate in,

8:38

but we also keep up with launching deals

8:41

and managing all the day to day that came from AOs

8:44

without, you know, Tool Like Tackle in the middle.

8:46

- Yeah, that's awesome.

8:47

I love how like more opportunities came to you.

8:50

And when we say opportunities, we mean like,

8:54

not just deal opportunities,

8:57

but opportunities to connect and lightning rounds

9:00

with sales teams in programs

9:02

being more programmatic and strategic

9:05

inside your partnership.

9:07

- Correct, yeah.

9:07

It was being asked to be in different cities

9:10

very frequently and a solo person running

9:13

all aspects of this overall partnership

9:16

from marketplace transactions to Coastal,

9:19

all the in-betweens, it was impossible to do all of this

9:23

because we realized quickly or I realized quickly

9:25

that the more of this I do,

9:28

the more activity comes from it,

9:30

the more I can't participate in this activity

9:32

to participate in managing the Coastal opportunities.

9:36

So it just became, when we talked about a flywheel,

9:38

this one became a bat flywheel.

9:40

So we started looking at how we could update that

9:43

and take advantage of it to correctly.

9:46

- Having sat in a similar shoe

9:48

without the partnership piece added to it,

9:50

managing all of this part of the business is a lot,

9:53

especially even you've got other full-time things

9:55

you need to start doing.

9:57

When you got to this phase,

9:59

it sounds like you were seeing success,

10:01

but your time was severely constrained,

10:03

operationally it was becoming difficult.

10:05

What was it like internally?

10:06

What were those conversations like to help get leadership

10:09

on board with, hey, we are seeing some value,

10:13

these are the metrics.

10:14

What do those conversations look like

10:15

to help get you some support where you needed it?

10:18

- Yeah, so I'd have a great leader who was open to listening

10:22

and wants to do all of it.

10:24

I told him, I'm a very, very competitive person.

10:27

And so when we hear that we're doing so great,

10:31

but we're still second best, third best for whatever it is,

10:35

AWS doesn't give you exacts or anything,

10:38

but you can hear some rumors here in the air

10:40

of how well you're doing.

10:41

And so I was able to go to him and say,

10:42

"Look, I don't want to be wherever we are.

10:46

"We're not number one, I don't want to be there."

10:48

And there's so many things that we could be doing

10:50

more of that we're not.

10:52

So success is cool, but what I tried to show is the,

10:57

I don't want to call it failures, but the misses, right?

10:59

The opportunity misses on our end,

11:01

hey, we could have done this if we had more people,

11:04

more technology, better tools, things like that.

11:08

We could have participated in this marketing activity

11:11

had we had the time to invest in that

11:14

due to the technology constraints

11:16

in managing ACE and things like that.

11:18

So I was able to really kind of show,

11:21

here's all of the things we're missing out on

11:23

because getting us to this point

11:26

where we're being invited to this

11:27

has caused so much administrative tasks

11:30

that without tools, technology, and people,

11:34

it was very hard to manage.

11:36

- I love that.

11:36

So sometimes people focus on like,

11:39

hey, these are the benefits we're gonna get

11:41

if we go do these things, right?

11:42

And they try to paint this picture of like,

11:45

what's the art of the possible?

11:47

And you were like, I'm gonna go create FOMO.

11:50

The fear of missing out.

11:53

To get to part, that's awesome.

11:55

- Yeah, I mean, I think there was a strong understanding

11:57

of what comes out of those things

12:00

and what would be present

12:02

if we were able to participate in these things.

12:04

But yeah, the FOMO was real.

12:06

Like we knew that we don't want our competitors

12:10

to hog all the attention.

12:11

If we're doing all this great work in co-selling

12:14

and sharing opportunities and sharing our message,

12:16

but are one of our competitors comes in

12:19

and then steals AWS's year runs a campaign

12:23

or does one of these activities

12:24

or is leveraging a program that we are not doing,

12:28

everything that we just did from a coastal perspective

12:30

kind of gets diminished a little bit.

12:32

And so we wanted to be able to do all of it essentially.

12:35

And so that was one of the ideas that I had.

12:38

It seems to have worked for now.

12:39

- So you kind of make this shift, right?

12:41

You start out in that phase of early adoption

12:45

or establishing our foundation.

12:47

You've built a little bit of that.

12:48

Now you get some additional lift internally

12:51

and you can apply the company to more programs and incentives.

12:55

And you mentioned this a little bit.

12:56

But can you elaborate on how Rapid7 used

13:01

some of the cloud programs

13:02

and some of the incentives available to you?

13:05

Now that you have some more time

13:07

to help grow that partnership.

13:09

- Yeah, so one of the things that I spent some time doing

13:12

is trying to show internally at the company

13:15

that again, AOs are icing on the cake,

13:18

but really what we should be looking at, AWS as is almost

13:21

like an investment partner.

13:23

AWS is a big thing.

13:25

And I wasn't on a program team at AWS.

13:27

I don't know this was certainty,

13:28

but it seems like the way they've developed their partner

13:31

programs is to allow everyone to compete on an even playing field.

13:36

There's other companies that are bigger than Rapid7s.

13:39

Companies that are smaller than Rapid7,

13:41

but to allow everybody to kind of gain the attention at AWS

13:46

and still develop their own business, AWS,

13:48

invests back to partners like Rapid7.

13:52

And what I wanted to do was show them how we could use that

13:57

to better our business.

13:59

And so a couple of years ago, last year,

14:01

I think it was, there was a program called GPA

14:04

that we were able to make some pretty significant money on.

14:07

And one of the things I said to myself,

14:10

still in a solo spot was, this is gonna be hard,

14:14

but the benefit is gonna pay off in the end.

14:17

And I actively pursued taking full advantage of the program

14:22

that was built to be able to show my company

14:25

what types of investments we could get.

14:28

But then also the same FOMO,

14:31

hey, by the way, this is with one person focusing

14:33

on one particular area.

14:35

This was a global program with the appropriate tools,

14:39

technology and people.

14:41

We can leverage this even more. And so now we've been leveraging

14:46

the CEI program this year with AWS to continue pulling

14:50

and funds. And the both of these programs,

14:52

whatever you call it, GPA or CEI,

14:54

they're both the same program, just different titles.

14:57

It allowed me to showcase why we should invest

15:01

in a company like Tackle to help us not only increase our

15:05

COSEL to use these programs, but to increase all the other

15:08

benefits that we're getting from COSEL with AWS,

15:11

with a reduced administrative task on the team

15:15

that's providing these things.

15:17

And also take full advantage of other things like the AWS

15:21

marketplace from Tackle's perspective.

15:24

But then we also use some of that investment to hire people

15:26

so that we could continue driving these programs

15:29

and driving our mind share with AWS.

15:32

- Love it. - Yeah, I mean, sometimes you get

15:34

revenue from the partnership and sometimes you get

15:39

investment funds that help you bring down your cost of

15:43

business or increase your margin so that you can invest in

15:48

these areas of the organization with this additional funds.

15:52

So revenue comes in a different form, right?

15:55

Not revenue from a customer, but revenue from AWS

15:58

that gives you the ability to make these investments,

16:02

whether it's like continuing to build out and co-build,

16:05

continuing to invest in the team and marketing

16:08

and to grow the program.

16:10

- Yeah, we, I had a conversation yesterday with one of our

16:13

director of global marketing and as we've talked about it,

16:16

it hit me.

16:17

You know, a lot of companies will measure their successes

16:19

on how they're competing with their competitors.

16:22

But within the AWS, the way the AWS has developed these

16:25

programs, the way I look at it is what you really should be

16:27

doing is seeing how you compete with yourself.

16:29

If you're bringing in cash and you're using it the

16:31

correct way in leveraging all of the aspects of AWS,

16:35

it allows you to grow your own business.

16:36

What did we do with the investment?

16:38

What did we do with these things from AWS?

16:40

And how do we turn it into more business for ourselves?

16:43

So really to me, we should be looking at year over year growth.

16:47

What are we doing with AWS to continue to grow our own business?

16:52

Not worrying about what everybody else is doing and getting through.

16:54

- Yeah, your success reminds me of a similar success of like

16:59

using the COSEL program as a way to boost your brand and get

17:03

access into programs, but also like investment funds from the

17:09

cloud partner.

17:10

And then they turned around and used those cloud investment

17:14

funds to really seed foundational marketing tools and like

17:20

marketing things that they wanted to use in order to help build

17:24

co-marketing campaigns and drive more business and awareness around

17:29

their joint solution.

17:30

And it was a game changer for that startup at the time.

17:34

It really seeded those foundational pieces in their business.

17:38

- I could imagine.

17:39

- Yeah.

17:40

- And you said something that made me think of my kids are always

17:43

saying this, but you said something smart in there, which is we

17:46

shouldn't compare ourselves in the outputs that other companies are

17:50

achieving to what our goals are and where we should be going.

17:53

And that my kids always say comparison is the thing of joy.

17:56

And now I've heard it like three times this week.

17:59

But that's like you made me think of that.

18:01

And I think that's often overlooked.

18:02

We're always going into this with, well, this company is top

18:07

to your partnership here.

18:08

And this is what they're doing.

18:09

And this is what they're getting.

18:10

And we want to be like that.

18:11

But we shouldn't always compare ourselves because we aren't doing

18:14

the same things.

18:15

- Right.

18:16

Yeah, exactly.

18:17

- Yeah, you got to compete against yourself.

18:19

- Yeah.

18:20

- I love it.

18:21

- That's awesome.

18:22

Let's move on to like talking more about the cloud programs.

18:27

You've talked about some of these cloud programs that have really

18:30

helped you get your cloud go to market, like up and running

18:33

and picking up that pace and acceleration

18:36

and like your investment in tackle.

18:39

What other ways has the cloud programs really helped

18:43

rapid-suppens overall goals and objectives?

18:46

- Program perspective, it has fully allowed us to invest

18:50

in different areas that we might not have had budget for.

18:55

We identified quickly that marketplace was just an organic

19:00

growth engine.

19:02

Marketplace lends itself to many significant wins at Rapid7.

19:06

We've seen deal sizes grow up to three x the size of traditional size

19:12

deals.

19:12

Our win rate increased to 40%.

19:15

Our sales cycle shortened by 21 days.

19:18

So we've seen some significant benefits in marketplace.

19:22

And what we identified is that marketplace was just growing

19:26

on its own.

19:27

Or we've actually, we've grown our marketplace utilization

19:31

by 750% since implementation on day one.

19:35

And we really have not enabled our teams until 2024

19:40

on how to use marketplace.

19:42

So this growth was completely driven by customer demand.

19:46

And what we identified is that if our customers are asking

19:49

for this, we need to be able to support it correctly.

19:52

And that's really where the second super-eyed benefit that we

19:56

were looking for in tackle is coming from allowing us to more

20:00

strategically deliver marketplace transactions,

20:03

build our presence.

20:04

That helps us align to things that are important to AWS as well.

20:09

Again, competing with yourself, but really what we're trying to do

20:12

is align our goals as an organization with the goals

20:15

of AWS so that we can just continue to take full advantage

20:18

of all of the programs and all of the initiatives

20:21

that AWS is offering.

20:22

If we try to fight that or go against it or not even that,

20:27

but just not embrace it, it makes things difficult for everyone.

20:31

And really, it's one of those things where the train's gone.

20:34

You might as well jump on board and use it to help your business

20:37

and take full advantage of it.

20:39

Yeah.

20:39

And you know at Taco, we have this cloud go to Marketfly Will.

20:43

And listening to your story,

20:45

you enter the flywheel via CoSAL.

20:48

You started it on your own.

20:50

And as you created operational pain, you called tackle

20:54

and said, Hey, tackle, can you help me?

20:56

I can't scale this as a one-man show.

20:59

And as I bring on people like I'm going to need help

21:03

in general around operational excellence in CoSAL,

21:06

then comes investment funds from the cloud provider

21:11

from AWS that enables you to now invest in doing more with tackle.

21:16

Also, Marketplace becomes increasingly more important.

21:20

So now you start to add Marketplace

21:23

and you're starting to create this momentum inside the flywheel.

21:28

When you saw that pain around Marketplace

21:31

and you came to tackle, like, what are all of the pieces

21:35

that you're using around our people and our technology

21:39

and our processes to really help you continue

21:44

to not slow down that momentum, keep that momentum going.

21:48

Well, we identified, because we were, like you said,

21:51

the flywheel inter-inch was CoSAL transactions,

21:55

we identified quickly that Marketplace transactions

21:59

followed the same linear line as CoSAL.

22:02

So the more we co-sold, the more we had Marketplace.

22:06

And you know, that's AWS bringing up Marketplace.

22:08

We're finding AWS customers that use Marketplace.

22:11

So we identified quickly that they're going right along

22:14

with each other.

22:15

So what I explained to the organization is,

22:19

if we're sharing more opportunities,

22:20

which is what we want to do to gain our mind share,

22:22

our Marketplace presence has got to be better.

22:25

And we're going to see organically

22:27

more Marketplace transactions.

22:29

So if we want to continue CoSALing at the level that we are,

22:32

we need to develop out better tools, people,

22:35

and processes around the Marketplace.

22:38

And so to help with CoSAL, we started talking with Tackle.

22:43

We wanted to help with Marketplace at the exact same time.

22:46

So it was a perfect, you know, marriage there

22:48

of what we were looking for for a tool perspective.

22:52

And now that we come in at CoSAL,

22:57

now we're doing more Marketplace,

22:59

this creates another operational efficiency

23:02

that we need to work on.

23:03

And at one point, we had a singular person, myself,

23:07

doing all Marketplace transactions all over the world.

23:10

And we have a very hockey stick like a month and quarter.

23:15

And so it was literally the last two weeks

23:17

just being slammed with creating Marketplace Private offers.

23:20

And it was starting to become apparent to me

23:22

that this was going to cause some customer concerns

23:25

or some bad customer experience.

23:27

And as we looked at that,

23:29

started partnering with Tackle,

23:30

it allowed us to simplify that process through the technology.

23:34

But it also allowed us to hire a deal up or not higher,

23:38

but leverage our deal operations team

23:40

that rapid seven to help create Marketplace.

23:43

Our original process was for 23 pages long

23:47

of how to create a Marketplace Private offer.

23:50

And once we had Tackle implemented,

23:52

it simplified that process significantly.

23:55

I didn't write the new process stock.

23:57

I actually didn't write the old one either.

23:58

I don't want to take credit for that

23:59

'cause if Aaron's watching, he did all that.

24:01

But we were able to simplify that drastically.

24:04

But the other thing that Tackle did

24:05

that significantly helped us is Tackle now could come in

24:08

and teach our team how to create these private offers.

24:11

And no longer was me trying to teach someone else

24:14

a 23 page document of how to do this.

24:18

We now had a simplified process that also came

24:21

with a great go-to-market coach

24:23

who was able to help us communicate

24:25

and train these new teams as they come in.

24:28

And this ultimately comes all the way back around

24:31

the flywheel back to our Coastal strategy.

24:34

And all of these pieces, the programs that we leverage,

24:36

the technology allowed me to actually go out

24:39

and hire a team of people to help with our AWS Alliance.

24:42

So we went from a team of one to a team of six now, globally.

24:47

And with the simplified Coastal process,

24:50

it makes it very easy to teach the team

24:53

and make them more efficient in a shorter period of time

24:56

to leverage the Coastal.

24:59

And we also have the support of a great go-to-market coach

25:02

to come in and help not only enable that team

25:05

help onboard them, teach them what they need to do

25:07

using the tools but the strategy behind the go-to-market

25:11

was very important to help get the folks on my team

25:14

up to speed very quickly.

25:16

- Yeah, I'm your journey, I'm sure,

25:18

is gonna resonate with some of our listeners.

25:21

It starts off as like a one-man band

25:23

and you have to do all the things

25:26

and you invest and partner up with Tackle using our software

25:31

instead of having to go hire a team of operational folks.

25:35

You're able to actually leverage your internal team

25:38

that already exists by giving them a very simple process

25:42

and a simple experience to do that.

25:45

They're willing to say, yeah, we can support this area

25:47

of the business so that you can go and best

25:50

in other resources that the organization doesn't have

25:54

and you really need in order to continue to scale

25:56

and grow your cloud, go to market efforts globally.

26:01

- And unlocks the little swim lanes.

26:03

I know when you talk to us the other day,

26:05

you mentioned how it got to the point

26:07

where you had to kind of put some guard rails

26:09

on what opportunities you could take your marketplace

26:11

because TJ's got my release.

26:13

- The great and market all of them.

26:14

- Look at all these opportunities where I'm missing,

26:16

I'm not because I can't.

26:18

- Yeah, we didn't pass any opportunities.

26:21

I will say that no matter what we were putting them

26:23

through the marketplace,

26:24

but I tried to create a false level, I guess,

26:28

of prioritization and we set up some guard rails

26:32

to 24 hour turnaround times.

26:35

Deal sizes had to be certain size with,

26:38

we again would make an exception,

26:39

but you'd have to come to me and talk to me

26:41

so that we could figure it out.

26:42

But all of that was really done because again,

26:45

we would get so many opportunities

26:46

at the end of a month or a quarter

26:49

that almost every other aspect of the business

26:52

would have to shut down for me other than

26:53

creating marketplace private offers.

26:56

And because it was a global reach,

26:57

I was creating private offers at seven in the morning,

27:00

6.30 in the morning for Australia

27:03

and then working till midnight for the West Coast.

27:07

So it created a ton of disdain on my part,

27:11

but I saw the value and I knew what we needed to do

27:14

because our customers are asking for it

27:15

and the benefits were apparent.

27:17

And I knew that it was important to a partner

27:19

that we were growing with.

27:21

And so we needed to figure out how to solve that challenge

27:24

and tackle has been extremely supportive

27:26

in helping us get to where we are this year

27:29

with a very strong marketplace strategy.

27:31

And all the other pieces that we get from AWS

27:33

lend itself to marketplace.

27:35

So my team is really heavily focused on marketplace,

27:39

but with that comes all the other things

27:41

that we need to do, right?

27:42

So we're not gonna go to marketplace without CoastLE.

27:45

So we're CoastLE and that leads to marketplace.

27:48

We're not gonna go to marketplace without enabling AWS.

27:51

My team is doing enablement.

27:52

Now we do enablement on all of those pieces

27:55

within the internal at Rapid7 as well

27:58

and the benefits that can be gained from that.

28:00

- Yeah, I can sympathize with your activities.

28:02

I think I said this on another episode.

28:04

The home life, trying to do it all on your own

28:07

and all those hours was severely strained.

28:09

So I think I had a lot of a butt kiss and to do after we had spent.

28:13

Halloween was always the very tough one

28:16

because it's always on the 31st.

28:18

And I'm walking around with my laptop doing trick-or-treating

28:23

and going to friends houses and having to sit outside

28:26

or sit in a room and do private offers

28:28

after we get back from trick-or-treating.

28:29

So yeah, that was a tough one.

28:31

New Year's Eve too was not a lot of fun.

28:33

- Oh yeah, no.

28:34

- Maybe they'll actually make a costume

28:35

about this role someday.

28:37

- It was super clear.

28:38

- Yeah, me and a cape and a computer attached to my side

28:41

with the Rapid7 shirt.

28:43

- Yeah, and a cloud over your head.

28:44

- Yeah.

28:45

(laughs)

28:46

- Now we talked a lot about aligning company goals

28:51

with Marketplace priorities.

28:52

We talked a little bit about it,

28:53

but I wanna unpack that for a second

28:55

before we kinda talk about how you kinda measure all of this.

28:58

But when it came to Rapid7 aligning

29:01

with AWS's priorities, for example,

29:04

how did you ensure that the company

29:07

from a strategy perspective was aligned to what AWS had

29:11

as a priority and can you get a bit example

29:14

of how that benefited you?

29:15

- Yeah, I mean, I think the way that I positioned it is,

29:20

we're doing these things anyway

29:21

and customers are driving us that direction.

29:24

AWS is driving us in that direction.

29:28

And we've had a ton of success leveraging the programs

29:31

we talked about it and we wanna keep having that success.

29:34

So let's figure out how we can take what we're doing

29:37

as an organization and align it to what is important

29:41

to AWS and just take that to market together

29:45

'cause if we're gonna do it and they're gonna do it,

29:47

why not do it all together?

29:49

And so Marketplace was something that again,

29:52

became extremely apparent just due to the organic growth

29:55

from our customers and then all the different reports,

29:58

I think the report that Tackle was put out

30:01

showed 15 billion in Marketplace transactions in 2023

30:06

and the expectation is about 125 billion in 2026.

30:10

So that's massive growth and it's just,

30:13

it continues to go.

30:14

I think our, we are currently six months into the year

30:18

well seven and a half, but if we look at our first six months

30:22

of the year, we've already done more transactions

30:25

through the Marketplace than we did all of last year.

30:28

And again, I've only had a team for six months.

30:31

Thank you.

30:32

I've only had a team for six months.

30:33

All of them have come on board,

30:36

new to this role,

30:38

new to what we're trying to accomplish.

30:40

And so in all fairness,

30:42

I can't even think that they were dangerous in this role

30:45

or at least the first three months,

30:46

tried, there's just so much to learn.

30:49

And so again, this is just organic.

30:51

It's just organic growth that we're seeing.

30:53

And I think our second half of the year

30:55

is just gonna be astronomical after all of these folks

30:58

have been enrolled for six months,

31:00

learning, understanding,

31:02

being taught by our Tackle,

31:04

go to Market Coach on all of these different aspects.

31:06

I think our second half of the year

31:08

is just gonna be astronomical.

31:10

But why again, fight the wave

31:13

when we can just jump right on it.

31:15

I did an SKO at the beginning of the year.

31:17

My analogy was,

31:20

if any of you have ever surfed or boogie boarded

31:23

or even body boarded in the ocean,

31:25

if you don't get on the wave at the right point in time,

31:27

you get left behind or you get run over by it, right?

31:31

So there's a perfect moment that you can get on

31:33

and ride that wave in and on the street.

31:35

And that's kind of where we are now.

31:37

We identified that,

31:38

we want to get on the wave

31:39

and ride it in the right way,

31:40

not get crushed by it

31:41

and also not get left behind.

31:43

And so that's where we aligned.

31:45

Okay, Marketplace is important.

31:47

It's happening organically.

31:49

Let's ride that wave in.

31:50

It's also very important to our partner.

31:54

So let's just, let's take advantage of it.

31:56

And then the way that we aligned that Marketplace goal,

32:00

it hits all the other activities

32:02

that need to happen

32:03

from a coastal perspective,

32:05

from the enablement perspective.

32:07

All of those pieces again, just take us back to Marketplace,

32:09

which is happening organically

32:11

and very important to one of our major partners.

32:14

I imagine you're sharing that with them as well, is that right?

32:17

Are you letting them know that you're aligned

32:19

and here's what we're doing?

32:20

And yeah, we just had a QBR last week

32:23

and we're doing great.

32:24

AWS is loving it.

32:25

You know, I've heard from multiple AWS personnel

32:29

that we are on the right track.

32:31

I don't want to give too many secrets away,

32:33

but I've heard that we are definitely on the right track

32:36

of what our focus is as an organization are.

32:39

And then as we look to leverage the partnership

32:42

and all of the benefits that AWS is offering,

32:44

I think it's just, it's gonna be great future

32:47

for a partnership with AWS.

32:49

You're on the right way, right?

32:50

You're on the big, yeah.

32:51

I know what, right?

32:52

I'll keep with the same analogy

32:54

throughout the rest of those, on the right ways, correct?

32:56

Exactly.

32:57

Yeah.

32:58

So you incubated some processes.

33:00

You kind of got them established.

33:02

And then you went and actually optimized them

33:06

by partnering with tackle, really building solid foundation.

33:11

Let's call that your boogie board or your surfboard

33:14

for you to be able to ride this wave.

33:17

In the beginning, you measured success

33:20

probably differently than the way you measure success today.

33:24

Can you kind of take us through that journey of when you're an ISV

33:29

and you're kind of in the establishing and building adoption

33:33

phases, what the things you focused on from a metric perspective

33:38

versus now you're really in this, like,

33:41

we're gonna go drive and scale the adoption

33:44

and how you're looking at metrics differently today.

33:48

Yeah, originally our success metrics were strictly POs

33:52

getting, or sharing opportunities with AWS.

33:55

And our theory was the more we share, the more we'll get back.

33:58

And I was fairly accurate.

34:00

You metriced on you sharing, like the number of deals you're sharing

34:03

and the increase of your pipeline to the cloud.

34:07

Correct, yeah.

34:08

Yeah, okay.

34:09

Yeah.

34:10

And that was, you know, I think it was still very new.

34:13

I mean, we're still, I would say very new to this

34:16

and learning, you know, what is important each and every day

34:20

and it changes all the time really.

34:22

But I think if the North Star, again, is back to,

34:26

how do we leverage the partnership to do better for ourselves?

34:29

Don't compare what we're doing anywhere else other than,

34:33

did we do better this year with our partnership

34:35

than we did last year?

34:36

And, you know, originally my goal, being a team of one,

34:41

was strictly just how many deals can you share?

34:44

And then we floated around the idea of, why don't we measure,

34:47

maybe we can measure how many deals do we get back from AWS?

34:51

But we really couldn't find like this correlation.

34:54

And really, if all you want to measure is AOs,

34:57

I mean, you have to have a team of a ton of people

35:01

and you have to be in AWS office all the time, non-stop.

35:04

That's the only way it works.

35:05

And it doesn't, it wouldn't, in my eyes, it doesn't scale.

35:07

It doesn't, there's no, or, okay.

35:09

So they do measure like how much revenue

35:12

and using our umbrella term of revenue, like investment funds

35:16

and AOs, like how much revenue?

35:19

Yes, yeah, that's, so the revenue from COSEL

35:22

was what we measured in year one, year two,

35:26

I was pushing for some different metrics,

35:27

but it just proved to be very difficult to track the metrics

35:32

I was trying to get to.

35:33

And so year two actually was COSEL revenue as well.

35:37

And what we got to in year three is, again,

35:40

all the activities that we're doing

35:41

are going to lead to marketplace.

35:43

So marketplace should be our success measurement.

35:46

We have to share opportunities to have marketplace transactions.

35:50

We have to do enablement for not only internal at Rapid7,

35:53

but external at AWS.

35:55

That should lead to marketplace transactions.

35:57

So this year our goal, my team's measurement of success

36:01

is marketplace total contract value

36:04

is what we're looking at this year.

36:06

That's great.

36:07

And TJ, you mentioned the other day

36:08

when we were talking through all these processes

36:11

and through all these changes,

36:12

you were looking at this when you came into the business

36:14

as like, we are a small business.

36:17

We're kind of looking at this through the lens of like,

36:19

hey, we have a million things that are changing every day.

36:21

I'm trying to test things over here.

36:24

I've got activities over here.

36:26

I'm really doing it all on my own as a small business.

36:29

And then we transition to this kind of enterprise lens.

36:32

And you've talked a lot about how those have come about

36:35

and the value that you started to see by doing as such.

36:38

Can you talk through some of the operational changes

36:41

that you made during this process?

36:42

We've heard about the deal desk team

36:44

and putting that together,

36:45

but anything with your listings

36:47

or the enablement processes that you built out,

36:50

what did that look like?

36:51

And how did that change from your small business approach

36:54

to this now scaled enterprise lens?

36:56

Yeah, I think the original approach,

36:58

as we got into the partnership with AWS,

37:01

there's many unknowns, you know, AWS, such a big company

37:04

and they did just everything they do

37:05

lose at a rapid scale.

37:07

And so I think marketplace,

37:11

I wasn't around for it, so I can't say with certainty,

37:13

but I think it was almost kind of like a surprise.

37:16

Like, oh, you're an AWS partner,

37:17

you got to be on the marketplace.

37:19

And the person that was in the shoes before me

37:21

was awesome at tons of knowledge.

37:24

And what he would do is as we had somebody interested

37:27

in the marketplace, he created quick listing.

37:30

Now he had a million things going on

37:32

and was actually doing a couple of different roles, I think.

37:35

And so as he would create these listings,

37:38

they might not be the same logos,

37:40

they might not be the same far out.

37:43

The pricing was put together

37:44

just to be able to transact quickly.

37:46

Majority, a lot of our businesses

37:48

don't through private offer,

37:49

so it wasn't this big deal, right?

37:51

That marketplace was all disparate

37:54

and definitely not uniform.

37:57

And so as we've progressed through our processes

38:01

and just our maturity,

38:03

we've identified that we need to have that consistency.

38:07

And so we've now looked at all the listings that we have

38:11

and what we're doing is actually consolidating them down,

38:13

and Rapid7 really is focused on three main products,

38:17

one of which is just all of our products,

38:19

our insight platform.

38:20

And then we have our managed threat complete solution

38:23

and our cloud risk complete solution.

38:24

So what we've tried to do is consolidate our listings down

38:27

to really give it that enterprise level kind of approach

38:31

and make sure all of our listings are consistent,

38:34

our price points are consistent,

38:36

and utilize all the different features and functions

38:38

that AWS has rolled out for the marketplace

38:41

so we can look like our marketplace brand

38:44

is the same as our global company brand.

38:47

It's not this little SMB mom and pop type shop.

38:51

- And I imagine you've put that back into your flywheel

38:54

as like, hey, we've got regulation

38:56

and governance around this process now, so that's it.

39:00

- Yes, something that we needed.

39:01

That's great.

39:02

- We now have a person who is responsible

39:05

as part of their role that is responsible

39:08

for managing our listings,

39:09

making sure they're updated whenever we create new materials

39:14

or pricing changes or logo changes

39:17

or whatever it is, this person is now responsible

39:20

for managing those updates on a regular basis

39:23

where before it would have been myself

39:26

trying to manage those things.

39:28

And that just proves another area that I have to stay up on

39:31

would be to consistently meet with our product management team

39:34

to understand what changes are coming,

39:36

what do I need to do?

39:37

And then go and update it to then go create

39:40

the marketplace private offer after I've co-sold

39:42

so it was not possible to update those things

39:46

at that point in time.

39:47

- Good advice for anybody listening.

39:49

Everybody's gonna start in this kind of small business phase.

39:52

We all want to mature to the enterprise state,

39:54

but we need to make sure we continuously evolve this,

39:57

incorporate these processes, get them documented,

40:00

make sure that we've got people to support us.

40:02

You can't do this as one person.

40:04

It just doesn't scale right

40:06

and it's not gonna get you the output looking for.

40:08

So that's great, great advice.

40:09

- And you have to align your presence

40:12

with how you are marketing and building your own product

40:17

and selling your product directly, right?

40:19

Like they have to be very similar models.

40:23

- Especially as more and more people start using the marketplace

40:25

because you can run into a company finds your information

40:30

through an event, through an internet search, whatever.

40:33

And their first instinct may be to go to the marketplace

40:37

to buy your product.

40:39

And if they go to the marketplace

40:40

and they see some outdated information,

40:43

they see different logos and different titles

40:47

and then it might make them feel okay,

40:50

is this company as serious as what I expected them to be?

40:55

And I think that we are doing a great job

40:58

of getting ourselves to that point on the marketplace.

41:00

- And TJ, you've been super generous with your time

41:02

and we wanna respect it.

41:04

So Aaron and I will just ask you probably one more question each.

41:07

But I wanna make sure Rapid7 got a good plug in here

41:12

and you've done quite the job at that.

41:14

But as you look ahead from a Rapid7 perspective,

41:17

looking at future investments and strategies

41:19

that you're making, how does that look

41:21

when it comes to cloud marketplace

41:23

and your presence in the marketplace?

41:24

Any things on the horizon that you could talk about

41:27

or any changes coming that would be valuable

41:29

for people to hear?

41:30

- Yeah, I think what we're focused on, again,

41:34

is marketplace really.

41:35

We're looking at all the different aspects.

41:38

And as we look at that waves that we're trying to ride right now,

41:43

we want to bring all of our partners on the journey

41:47

with us along with us.

41:48

We have a very strong partnership

41:51

or a channel partner strategy at Rapid7

41:54

and our goal is to bring them along on the journey with us.

41:58

And so as we look towards the future,

42:00

we start to develop and hone in our own marketplace strategy.

42:04

We want to make sure that we take that same message,

42:07

take that same initiative and do that with our resellers

42:11

and with all of our channel partners.

42:12

And so I think moving into the future,

42:14

as we've gotten better at leveraging this,

42:17

now it puts us in a position to be able to teach

42:20

and work alongside of our partners

42:22

so that we can all win.

42:23

And really, I mean, in the grand scheme of things,

42:25

it's for the customer, right?

42:27

We're working with channel partners to deliver our solutions

42:30

to our customers.

42:31

And if we can all ride that marketplace wave

42:34

and this cloud-go-to-market strategy together,

42:36

then I think it's going to be a win, not only for Rapid7

42:40

and our channel partners, but our customers is the big one.

42:43

- So what advice would you give someone who's just starting out?

42:47

Let's say you're talking to yourself, you know,

42:50

in the very beginning, like the things you know now,

42:53

what would you tell yourself in the very beginning?

42:55

Like, oh, I wish I would have known that.

42:58

When I was first getting started,

43:00

that would have been a game changer for me.

43:03

- Yeah, that would have been hard

43:04

because even knowing what I know,

43:06

would I have changed what I did?

43:07

I don't know.

43:08

But I think the big one for me is like, oh, let's co-s out.

43:12

Sure.

43:13

Let's share all these opportunities.

43:15

But what I didn't think about was all of the

43:18

administrative tasks that come behind that

43:21

and the potential to really create potentially bad

43:24

relationships with AWS, you know, the partner

43:26

that we're trying to work with,

43:27

we were sharing so many opportunities

43:29

they couldn't devote the attention that was required

43:33

to my colleagues at AWS and to the administrative tasks

43:37

that are required to manage all that.

43:39

So if there's any advice, I would say, you know, slow it down.

43:42

So realistic goals, understand that there's always

43:46

going to be another piece that you have to do.

43:49

Like you might think that you have it,

43:51

but you're going to do it and find out

43:52

there's more work that needs to be done after the fact

43:55

that you didn't know about.

43:56

And so that's some realistic goals and slow roll it.

44:00

Set an end date for what you're trying to accomplish

44:03

and make sure that you give yourself enough time

44:05

to provide the right experience for it

44:07

unless you like work in 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

44:10

Yeah, I think that is always like,

44:13

it's sneaky time consuming is what I always tell ISV is like,

44:17

and while it's a very tactical thing,

44:19

it's a very strategic thing.

44:21

And if you really need to be ready

44:24

because it is going to either be a positive

44:28

or a negative thing to your brand

44:30

when you try to go to market with AWS

44:33

or any of the cloud providers,

44:35

if you're not really ready to follow that up

44:38

and have operational excellence around it,

44:41

that's going to actually be a negative towards your brand

44:44

and could actually hurt you and not help you.

44:47

Yes.

44:48

Well, today, thank you so much.

44:51

This was so great.

44:52

I know we could talk forever about our experiences

44:56

with the clouds and with going to market

44:59

and like all the fun things we're doing now

45:01

and fun things we're going to do in the future together.

45:03

So really appreciate you.

45:05

Not just as a customer,

45:07

but now you're also on our newly established

45:10

customer advisory board.

45:11

Thank you for you spending more time with us.

45:15

Thank you guys.

45:16

This is great.

45:16

Thank you both.

45:17

And next time you want to color coordinate

45:19

and ride some waves,

45:19

I know Eric, I'll find right now.

45:21

There we go.

45:22

Sounds like a plan to me.

45:24

Awesome.

45:25

That's great.

45:25

Thank you.

45:26

Thanks everybody for listening.

45:27

Thank you both.

45:28

And we'll see you next time.

45:30

Take care.

45:31

All right, Patrick.

45:32

It's time for aha moments from our conversation with TJ.

45:37

What aha moment did you have?

45:38

What did he leave you with?

45:40

I think you and I probably have a bunch.

45:41

I saw my pen going and I thought,

45:43

I saw you thinking about these.

45:44

So I know next time I'm going to need to like grab a pen

45:47

and paper because I'm like,

45:48

I can't remember all of these.

45:50

Yeah, I'm going to put it back on you

45:52

because I think when he first started talking,

45:54

he was really going through like our workshop

45:57

and unpacking the brand building piece.

45:59

So for me, like having a customer have that click

46:02

in their head and start to use co-sell to build brand,

46:04

like I'm going to stop talking because I know you.

46:06

This is really--

46:07

I was like, oh, he's just pulling on my heartstrings.

46:12

I started a whole business around co-sell

46:13

and I really truly believe that fundamentally co-sell

46:18

is a great branding tool for ISVs

46:22

who are trying to establish their cloud

46:25

going to market strategy with their cloud partner

46:28

as well as like accelerated.

46:30

And his story was just like, yes, we used co-sell

46:34

and co-sell was really about branding

46:36

and giving us an opportunity to go knock on everyone's door

46:40

and tell our story who we are, what we do, who are our customers,

46:44

who are we trying to sell into?

46:46

And he not only used co-sell, but then he applied one of our accelerators

46:52

that we say like your experience can happen

46:55

in a variety of different time frames.

46:58

And one of those factors that can influence your time

47:02

is the volume of deals.

47:04

So then he just slammed the system with a ton of deals

47:08

so that he could get their attention even faster.

47:12

Yeah.

47:12

And then realized-- so one of my other points was like,

47:15

then he realized, oh shoot, I can't do this 24 hours a day

47:19

because now I'm getting actual buy-in and feedback

47:22

and conversation started with straps.

47:25

Right.

47:25

And he realized that I have to keep operational excellence

47:29

because this is part of my brand.

47:31

And if I actually have bad deals in there

47:34

or deals that I'm not launching on time

47:37

or not closing them out as a loss so that I could stay focused

47:40

on the active deals, he was like, this

47:43

is going to hurt my brand.

47:44

Just as much as it could help my brand,

47:46

if I don't do this and do this well,

47:50

it's really going to hurt my brand.

47:52

Yeah.

47:52

So if you know me and you follow me,

47:54

you know I talk a lot about operational transformation.

47:56

And this is what we're talking about.

47:58

There are things that will change internally.

48:00

And you need to be flexible to handle them.

48:02

So they're handling them nicely now.

48:04

I think that was a good one.

48:06

What did you think about--

48:07

I know we talked about it, but what

48:08

did you think about when he was talking about comparison

48:10

and competing with others?

48:12

Oh my gosh.

48:13

The athlete in me--

48:14

I was like, yes, I'm a runner.

48:16

Like every time I go out to run, I'm always like competing

48:19

against myself.

48:20

Can I run faster?

48:22

Can I run farther?

48:23

You know, when I was competitively running,

48:25

it was like I wasn't really worried about who was in the race

48:27

because I was racing against myself.

48:29

So when he said that about metrics and not comparing yourself

48:35

to what other ISVs are doing or where you're

48:38

necessarily staggering to inside of programs,

48:42

but really just to compete against yourself

48:44

and to always try and do better than the last time.

48:47

And that those metrics do change as you evolve

48:51

and as the cloud providers putting out different priorities,

48:54

but always still keeping that fundamental principle

48:57

of you are competing with yourself.

49:00

And when you compete with yourself,

49:02

you naturally are going to strive for excellence

49:06

to try and do better next time and have

49:09

a natural progression of improvement.

49:11

Yeah, because we're kind of still early in this game,

49:13

but we're not that early.

49:15

Our competitors, most of your competitors

49:17

are either in or getting in.

49:19

And so we're all going to be on the same playing field soon.

49:22

So how can you compete more with yourself

49:25

to become that number one spot?

49:26

How do we year over year get better at one piece of the business?

49:30

We need to become more efficient on the back end.

49:33

Yeah.

49:34

And you know, the other thing I really liked in his story

49:37

was he created some processes in the beginning, right?

49:40

I incubated these processes.

49:42

And then when I needed help, he called a partner.

49:48

He called tackle, someone who has experience in this

49:51

to really help him refine his operational processes

49:55

so that they were easier and with ease came speed.

49:59

And then the part of his story that I think a lot of times

50:03

is the value add of being a tackle partner is our coaching

50:08

and not only our coaches, but our support team,

50:12

our implementation team.

50:13

We are wrapping ourselves around that customer,

50:17

really helping them enable and educate them in that role.

50:21

Like we're training them, like a trainer, we're training them.

50:25

We're there to help teach them and to help continue

50:28

to teach them as things evolve and change

50:32

with the cloud provider, also within tackle,

50:34

making their life easier.

50:36

We are their first point of contact for training

50:40

and technical support.

50:42

So instead of calling the cloud or leaning on the cloud

50:45

partner, they're actually leaning on us

50:48

and we are scaling them faster, right?

50:51

Then if they were doing it on their own,

50:54

or potentially if they were relying on the cloud partner

50:57

because the cloud partner has 40,000 partners

51:00

that they have to support, right?

51:02

I really loved that.

51:04

Yeah, and you said our coaches and one of the things

51:07

I wanted to bring up, I know our coaches are doing this

51:10

and they're helping customers like TJ looking at the metrics

51:13

that you should be tracking, the things to compete

51:16

against yourself, what's our current win rate?

51:19

How's that look quarter over quarter?

51:20

What is our deal size?

51:22

And he said that their win rates are up over 40% now.

51:26

Their deal sizes have tripled.

51:28

Their sales cycle decreased by 21 days.

51:31

Those are things that are tangible value ROI metrics

51:36

that every CFO wants to see and every CRO is giddy about.

51:41

So if you're not tracking those today and you're listening

51:44

and maybe you don't have a coach from tackle,

51:46

we've got content out there, go track those things

51:49

because that's how you're gonna continue to get

51:51

more buy-in internally, build out your teams,

51:54

get more support and ultimately grow.

51:57

And what influenced that was also the fact

51:59

that tackle simplified his operational processes.

52:04

And because of that simplification,

52:06

he was able to train other people in the organization.

52:09

He's able to onboard new members into his team faster, right?

52:13

So in order to get those, he had to create

52:16

not only operational efficiency,

52:18

but simplification in his operations too.

52:21

And that also contributed to his growth metrics.

52:26

- Yeah, I remember I had three Excel files,

52:29

each with supporting documents for each of the cloud providers

52:32

I was in that had, here's an intake form from sales.

52:36

Here's how to go create a deal in this marketplace.

52:38

Here's how to do one in that.

52:40

And then when we hired tackle, I don't have to do all this

52:42

anymore.

52:43

I just have to have one quick 10 minute demo.

52:46

- That's great.

52:47

- Yeah, I know.

52:48

Sometimes I'll ask a customer,

52:49

I'm like, my goal in life is to get you out of spreadsheets.

52:52

So tell me today what's a spreadsheet you're using

52:55

and how can we do that in our product for you?

52:58

- Yeah, that was awesome.

52:59

Well, Aaron, thank you again.

53:01

This was an awesome episode for everybody listening.

53:03

Go check out TJ Schmidt.

53:05

He goes by Timothy on LinkedIn.

53:07

So if you want to connect with him, you can't find him.

53:09

You got to look at Timothy.

53:11

Rapid Seven, director of cloud partnerships.

53:13

I'm your co-host Patrick Riley.

53:16

- I'm your co-host Aaron Feiger.

53:17

- And this was another episode of Unlock Cloud Good Market.

53:21

Thanks for joining.

53:22

- Thanks for joining.

53:23

- So pull up a chair.

53:24

- Grab a notebook and join us as we share the essential stages

53:28

of the maturity model to start, optimize,

53:30

and grow your company's revenue using the cloud.

53:34

For more resources on executing your cloud,

53:36

go to Market Strategy.

53:37

You can visit our website at tackle.io.