Why You Shouldn't Overlook Distribution

Unlock the secrets of successful channel partnerships with industry veteran Kevin Homer, as he takes us through his compelling journey in the channel industry. With over two decades of experience and valuable lessons from his mentor, Kevin shares how the art of trust and relationship building can transform businesses. He recounts a memorable story from his early days at Fishnet, where the power of a trusted partner opened doors and provided instant credibility. Kevin's insights reveal why treating channel partnerships with care can pay off in long term success and market reach.

Kevin discusses leveraging distribution partnerships, gives the example of partnering with TD Synex at Iterate.ai and how this relationship simplifies reaching thousands of resellers. As we dive into international partnerships, Kevin highlights the importance of aligning with skilled and motivated partners to drive growth, particularly in collaboration with hardware manufacturers.

Gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of channel GTM strategies and how embracing these models can lead to transformative business growth.

Kevin's LinkedIn Profile
Iterate.ai website

Chapters

• 0:20 Channel Voices
• 15:18 Evolving Channel Strategies in AI
• 25:50 Channel Expansion and Partner Strategies

Transcript

Maciej: 0:20

Hello, welcome and thank you for tuning in to Channel Voices, the podcast for future channel leaders, where we learn the ins and outs of partner ecosystems through casual conversations with channel professionals from a variety of industries, partner types and geographies. My name is Maciek and I'm your host, kevin Homer, welcome to Channel Voices.

Kevin Homer: 1:01

Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Maciej: 1:03

Kevin, would you mind just introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about your channel background, please?

Kevin Homer: 1:09

Sure, my name is Kevin Homer and my channel background that goes along here is that everybody who knows me is tired of hearing me say and I got a little gray in my beard here. So my channel background, I'd have to say. My roots go back 20 plus years to a company called Vericept that I worked with, and this is back when technology was just coming around. So it's a data security product. It was a data leakage protection offering that we had, and there's a guy there that I refer to as the godfather, lovinglyly, who taught me the channel ways. Ken Totoro I'll give him a shout out here Huge believer in the channel, just pounded it into me to get me to realize that the points you give up through the channel come back to pay you tenfold. So that's where I first had my exposure to them, and then I've just worked the channel in several organizations since then.

Maciej: 2:04

So fantastic, and do you know what A lot of guests on the podcast they do speak about that mentor that they had when they, when they did, you know, dip their toe into into the channel and someone who kind of held their hand or, in you know, in some cases really battered the channel into them Right, and kind of the whole methodology that goes with it.

Kevin Homer: 2:27

Yeah, and it's really the truth. Because salespeople, as you know, are coin operated and when you're looking at bringing in, especially when you're looking at bringing in individual deals, and you start running the math, as what your take would be if you sold it directly, versus sharing in the revenue, and it not only brings the company's revenue down but it also brings the commissions down for salespeople. And it really is. It's a marathon, it's not a sprint. I mean, if you start looking at it on a deal by deal basis, that's the wrong approach because you're always going to have heartburn that way. But I've just come to realize the more you let the channel know that you're in it for the long haul, the more they then trust you and the more deals that they bring to you. And it just if you start comparing that it's not even close in terms of what the value is long term.

Maciej: 3:21

Absolutely is long-term Absolutely. And for a salesperson, you know, having a team that basically works for you and all those different territories with you know, access to customers who are actively looking for things and they be able to pitch on your behalf, I mean, it doesn't get any better than that, does it?

Kevin Homer: 3:39

It really doesn't. You just want me to jump into a story Cause I got one to share. Oh, go on, go on. Yeah, now you're going to love this, because it's become a joke around here because I used it during the interview process when I was talking to John Nordmark and Brian Sathia Nathan, who are the co-founders of Iterate, and the thing that really got me hooked on the channel it was when I was with Vericept and trying to understand the value and giving up points and things like that. It Verisept and trying to understand the value and giving up points and things like that. It might have been the first meeting I ever went on.

Kevin Homer: 4:16

There's a company called Fishnet. That's an old school security reseller, var, that merged with Acuvant now and has formed Optiv, which is one of the largest data security resellers in the country, if not the world. So I was with Fishnet at the time and this is back in the early 2000s. So you know, just technology, software, the internet, all those things were still relatively new and certainly data security was on the, you know, kind of on the upswing and at its early stages. So when I finally got convinced to try out the channel, one of the reps from Fishnet took me into his customer and we walked in the door there and I had never met these people before. He had just knew what we did.

Kevin Homer: 4:53

So we scheduled the meeting with us and it was with the chief information security officer and the director of security, so two pretty good titles, right.

Kevin Homer: 5:00

That we were walking in there with. And we walked in the door, me beside this guy that I walked in with, and they both stood up with a big smile and said Uncle Ron, and that was the guy I was with. I walked into the room with Uncle Ron, didn't let it show on my face, but I kind of chuckled inside and it really hit me that you know I was being invited to the family picnic is what it felt like here, as I was showing up with uncle Ron and immediately walked in with credibility because they obviously trusted him. So for him to bring me in to talk with them, it said a lot because you know he was there or they were his customer and he wasn't going to introduce just anyone. So how long would it have taken me to take a battering ram to try to break that door down and get that kind of a meeting, especially at the sea level that we were out there. It would have taken months if I ever got a meeting at all, so just to walk in with Uncle Ron here.

Kevin Homer: 6:00

It's really a statement about what the channel can do.

Maciej: 6:03

That's a fantastic story. I absolutely love it. Yeah, I was just as you were going through this and you know, not only is it a warm introduction, it's a warm introduction in person, right, and it's by someone who they absolutely trust To get a meeting. Imagine the amount of selling upwards by you know, one gatekeeper, second gatekeeper, convincing people to bring it upwards to their c-level execs. I mean, it's a struggle right at the best of times. Um, that's, yeah, the best of times is right, yeah. So tell us a little bit about, um, your current role. So you're at iterate. What do you do at iterate? Do you have, do you have, channel? What? How does that work today?

Kevin Homer: 6:52

yeah. So when I was, uh, interviewing back I've been here just about 10 months now, so about a year ago is when I was in the in the throes of the interview process and and the organization had done something that I hadn't seen in many of the companies that I'd worked for previously. So I've done more than a handful of startups now it's probably five or so and most of the organizations that I've worked with they certainly didn't have a mature product and if they had anything to offer at all, it was kind of early stages and we were really selling the vision of what the company could be on a whiteboard, right. So trying to get them to buy into what it could be. You know, like here's a problem in the world and we're going to go fix that Big difference of what is going on here at Iterate, because Iterate was founded in 2014. And it is an AI company that actually changed its name from com to ai in 2017. So this was seven years ago at this point and I don't know how many people had heard of AI in 2017, but I certainly had not. So they're very much on the forefront of the whole AI movement.

Kevin Homer: 8:03

You know the early folks blazing that trail. So when I was talking with them, it was a unique situation I found myself in where, instead of walking in through the door and saying, man, this sounds like it's going to be great, I was the beneficiary of having a mature product that had already been built. For 10 years they had been building this product and, instead of rushing it to market where a lot of companies are working with venture capital organizations and the VCs are demanding revenue, you know, pretty quickly they have to show returns and all that kind of stuff. So this was a bootstrapped company and they built the product first before trying to do like a major launch. So a handful of really solid customers, custom work that was done and built the product around those use cases and then, along the way, we're able to bring products that we're now moving to the masses so we can do customized work and things like that.

Kevin Homer: 8:58

But we have a handful of products that we're bringing out there. The first one's Generate, which is an AI assistant. A lot of people in the market when you talk about AI, that's one of the things that they are familiar with and have heard of right. So Microsoft's Copilot is one that people are familiar with, right. So it's an offering that's out and I don't want to get into a big sales pitch here and go too deep on that.

Kevin Homer: 9:19

But long story short, to answer your question is just the fact that when I was brought on board here, it specifically was because the company is ripe for the channel, for where we are. So we're looking to scale that way. With a mature product you can go a couple of different directions as you build out a company. Right, you can go hire salespeople and you can pay them salaries and overhead and train them for months and and things like that. Or you could take it to the channel where you essentially go to these organizations that already have those Uncle Ron existing relationships, and then you look at a product that's already ripe and ready to go with a market that's ready to accept it, and you just forego all that and set up more of a revenue share type of an approach. So that's what we've really done here is we've decided to go in that direction and I couldn't be more excited about the approach the company's taking Fantastic.

Maciej: 10:10

Great to hear, and this is the second time that Uncle Ron came up, and I'm sure he's going to come up again when you go tell us about other things. But yeah, it's so important though, isn't it? Because you mentioned you know this is a product that has been that was being developed since 2014. Like, how important is it to have a product that is ready for the channel right, because a lot of companies go either too early or sometimes they go too late, where the market is already saturated and there's other competitors out there and potentially, partners already in relationships with the other vendors. So you came into the company exactly at the right time and, as you were evaluating, once you were in the door and you were evaluating the business, the product, and you were tasked with bringing partnerships to the business, the product, and you were tasked with bringing partnerships to the table. Like, what types of partnerships were you thinking of straight off the bat?

Kevin Homer: 11:13

Yeah. So it's really interesting with AI because there's a couple different ways I could answer that right. So with our AI assistance, the AI is starting to be pushed down where organizations can make decisions at a traditional level where they've done business in the past right. So where I've sold the majority of my career is that if you could get to a VP level, then you were able to sell right. If you reach the VP, they typically have budget, they've got projects that are active and they have authority to make those decisions.

Kevin Homer: 11:43

What I found here is that with AI, I think a lot of organizations are a little bit like a deer in the headlights. So there's so much going on with AI. It's really a little bit confusing to a lot of people, right, and the hardest part about it, I think in my mind, and the reason why people are confused, is that it's moving so fast that things that are relevant as you learn about something that's relevant and relatively new, like the last six months or something like that you know no sooner do you learn about that that all of a sudden people have moved on and there's the next thing that's now on the horizon. So I think that the C-suite at a lot of these organizations are concerned that they're going to make a bad decision when they invest in an AI company, and so when we're out there, it's really a huge differentiator with iterate and what we're doing is that I mentioned we have Generate, which is organizations should and could invest in our company is because, at the core, we have an AI platform. So it's a low-code drag-and-drop platform where we have 480 AI nodes that are already previously written, where we can just pull those in and build software exponentially faster.

Kevin Homer: 13:04

The key about that platform is that those nodes that we've already built, what's coming tomorrow? Well, we know kind of what's coming tomorrow, but what's coming three months from now is going to be a lot of new things. Probably three months from now, with our platform, we can basically build new nodes that go along with the tide so we can basically grow as the industry grows. So companies that are out there going man, we got to be careful we don't buy in. Some company that goes away and becomes defunct is. We've got this platform that we build right on top of. If something changes, it doesn't matter anymore, we can pull it out. Or if it matters but now requires something else to go on top of that. We'll just build it and stack it right on top of that Lego. So it's really the fact that I think that's the play here with iterate that's the reason I was so interested in joining the organization.

Maciej: 13:51

Perfect. And so, in terms of those types of partners, so were you thinking it's going to be mainly tech alliances, because it's the type of a product where we really would want to have built in into other products, or is it managed service providers? What type of a partner did you close first?

Kevin Homer: 14:10

Yeah, so it's the ones that have those high level relationships. So when we're working we're working with TD Synnex right as a distributor that we've gone to market with here initially and they've been an awesome partner. When we're working with them, we're really identified. I've had this conversation with their executive team and just talked about we're looking for the organizations that have relationships really high up the ladder like that, because that's where you really got to get into the C-suite.

Kevin Homer: 14:37

I feel like with AI right, that doesn't mean it can't be sold downstream and certainly with the AI assistance, there's a lot of companies that have actually have budget for that. I think you're probably going to see almost every company is going to be using AI assistance by you know, beginning of 2026, right, so 15 months from now, I don't know 75% of them are going to be doing that. So because of that, almost any organizations that have strong relationships with the IT or data security type of divisions, they can sell or generate product. But when it comes to the platform and really larger partnerships, we're really hoping to find some organizations at that C-suite that they have there.

Maciej: 15:18

AI. It's on top of everybody's mind. Today. Everyone is talking about AI, be it any company kind of building it in into their products, to things like, you know, channel strategies alone. I just had the episode released last week with Philip Wegner and he was talking about, you know, ai needs to be built in into channel processes right, because companies need things fast. Automation is already here, but we need to enrich that experience for, you know, for distributors, for resellers working with a given vendor. So AI is absolutely everywhere, from a college student that is writing a paper they're helping themselves with some AI prompt to businesses solving really, really complex problems. So, in terms of your channel partner program, is there, is there one that formally exists already? And if, if yes, could you, could you tell us a little bit more about this?

Kevin Homer: 16:27

Yeah. So, being the company of size that we are right. And this really comes down to the strategy I've I've done. I rolled out the channel program at LogRhythm, which was, you know, 2008 to 2013 ish, somewhere in that timeframe, and when I was doing that we rolled out just working with a lot of individual resellers, right, and we were growing and taking them on one at a time. It's really interesting with the distribution world versus going just through the partners, right. So when you introduce distribution, it obviously adds another layer, right where there's a piece of the pie that gets cut out for the disti to get paid as well.

Kevin Homer: 17:05

But there's so many benefits to a company our size to work through distribution. So TD Synnex says they're the largest distributor in the world. They have 25,000 resellers that are underneath them. So our relationship is with TD Cynics and TD Cynics has the relationship reach those resellers much more quickly. But the agreements are already in place. We don't have to go through legal contracts with each one of them. So if you were to sit there and think, let's say, for a smaller company, right, we're obviously not going to tackle 20. If we were just to go to those resellers ourselves, we're not going to go to 25,000, but let's say we were to go, we're going to take 25, 50, whatever it is the individual sales cycles to go through with each one of them, to have meetings and go through demos, and then you have another meeting and I forgot this person was on vacation. Then you go through legal contracts and all those things. Then you have to train them on how to do that. It really, I mean, it takes months to do that. So to go through distribution for us we talked about it and it just makes a ton of sense just to get there quickly because the speed that AI is moving, we can't wait to go there. It's with the move really really fast.

Kevin Homer: 18:25

So our partnership to get through them, we worked with Intel, who's been a great partner of ours out of the gate, and that relationship and getting introduced to their ecosystem has been huge for our company as well. So when we were looking at different distys to work with, we worked with them and decided to go with TD Cynics initially here. So having to go through them, we're now working with them to identify which specific partners to start with to roll this out. But again, just to remind you, there's two different paths that we have, because Generate really a lot of them could sell Generate because a lot of organizations are ready for that and they can be sold at a lower level.

Kevin Homer: 19:02

And then we're really looking for a handful that are interested in Interplay, which is our platform. If they're really to get that deep and they really want to invest in working with us, then we would like to train them on that. But it really it's the two A's that they need. They need the aptitude to use our platform and they need the appetite to focus on working with us as a partner. So those two things is what they need if they want to use Interplay. So there'll be a smaller number of those, but I think that that's good. We'll really be able to cut our teeth on that, get a handful of those organizations going while we really focus on taking it and generate to market Fantastic.

Maciej: 19:40

And it's so interesting that you went the route of distribution. Obviously, you come with a lot of experience and you can advise the company on how to get things done faster, how distribution would help you do that. A lot of companies today, I think, they overlook distribution for some reason, maybe because they still think of that traditional distributor who has a warehouse and stocks equipment and sends that out. Distribution has evolved so much, especially in the software industry. I mean, they do so many great things and they truly have revolutionized what they are today and what services they provide, not only on behalf of the vendor but on their own. There's value-added distributors as well, of course, but having that network established is so important to new vendors entering the channel game right.

Kevin Homer: 20:42

Isn't it funny how it's evolved so much.

Maciej: 20:45

I know.

Kevin Homer: 20:46

Not only evolved but it's also come back full circle. Back in Vericept in the early 2000s we were shipping appliances because we wanted known hardware and it was easier to support and things like that. So we were loading them on the machines. I remember we just had our server room that was just stacked with boxes of hardware that we were ready and you had to check units to make sure they were available and load before you ship and all that kind of stuff. And then the big cloud movement comes and hits and everybody was moving to the cloud. Now people were pulling things back on prem and it's really. It just evolves and you find different reasons why different things work.

Maciej: 21:21

So I think this is so important. If you are seriously thinking about going the channel route as a company, I think you should really rely on people who have done this before. I think you should really rely on people who have done this before, and I know this podcast is to provide that knowledge to people who really want to become that next channel leader within either their company, where they are now, or fast track and go and work somewhere else. But if you're really well established as a company and you know you have a product that is ready for the channel, people like you with that experience, who have done this before, are really so important, because not only you can explain what channel used to be, but also what it is today and what it most likely is going to be tomorrow.

Kevin Homer: 22:09

Yeah, I appreciate that, you know. Thank you for the compliment, but I have to tell you something I think is just as important and it really goes to, I think, the age that I'm getting to be here the older I get, the more I realize that you just can't operate in a vacuum and think, oh, I've done it, now I've got all the answers. Like I've done it, now, I've got all the answers. Like I lean on people as we've been rolling this out. You know, I called on people that are doing the channel in different stages of their career. Some of that have done it, been doing it and dedicated their entire career to it. So I've managed direct sales teams as well, Right, and I've. And the smaller company side is really where the channels come into play, because you're scaling and things like that, Right.

Kevin Homer: 22:49

But but just the fact that people have just exclusively done the channel for years, like I picked their brains of several people and I think if you start to think you're too smart by yourself, I mean you're going to miss something.

Kevin Homer: 23:01

It's like you know, you have to have some chops yourself, but it really if you're not asking people to validate what you're doing, that you trust like, hey, man, here's what I'm thinking. But can you just do me a favor and poke holes in my plan? Like, what am I? What am I missing? You know what I mean? Like like I'll just give you one example is like deal registration, right, so like deal reg through the channel. I mean there, there are a lot of opinions about there, about whether you do deal reg or you don't, and there's pluses and minuses to each side. And it's really just talking it through with someone. I'm also an external processor, so it helps me to do that for sure. But I just think the smartest people if you're the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room. You ever hear that saying yeah absolutely.

Kevin Homer: 23:43

Right, so you just go and lean on people, man, just even if they're at the same level as they are, just to kind of, you know, get to poke ideas with other folks. I think is tremendously helpful.

Maciej: 23:53

It's funny that you mentioned deal registration, because that's a conversation that I'm having pretty much every day, based on the role that I have and the product that we bring to the market for vendors that go to market via the channel, the market for um, for vendors that go to market via the channel. And, yeah, some, some companies choose not to do deal reg, right, for their own reasons. Others do it, but there isn't a company that does it, you know, the same way that the other one does, even though they're in the same industry at a lot of times. Right, there's, there's a lot to deal registration. That would be potentially an episode of its own just to go through that pros and cons and how you could do that and depending on the industry that you're in, but depending on the product that you provide, et cetera, et cetera.

Maciej: 24:41

I mean so many different ways of doing it. And then adding the, the complexity. Do you do deal registration in a two-tier channel, right? Do you? You know, or do you stay at that one tier and you only have those resellers, or you use distribution but you rely on distribution to do the deal registration? I mean, there's so much to unpack, right, but I'm I'm digressing here the point.

Kevin Homer: 25:05

I wanted to mention.

Maciej: 25:06

You're right that could be a whole episode. We might have to make a couple of episodes out of this one. But, kevin, you talked about relying on people who have been in the channel or are new to the channel. People come with new ideas. I, selfishly, am building a network of channel professionals based on this podcast, on the people that I speak with. You know, I will have a network of people that I can go to and have a conversation and I hope you know, kevin, you would be one of those that would take my call when I would like you to dig holes in my plans right, for sure.

Maciej: 25:44

Selfishly. That's what I'm doing, that's my way of networking, Right, but to do in that podcast itate. So you mentioned TD Cinex, you mentioned Intel. These are two prominent partnerships to have in your portfolio. How do you see going to market even further and expanding internationally, et cetera? Do you envision going the same route as in deploying distribution channels or any other way in different parts of the world?

Kevin Homer: 26:38

So it's a good question, right, and there's some thoughts that I have around that we're super focused on the US right now, and that doesn't mean we're not selling any other regions. So we've got Fuji is a partner of ours over in Asia Pac, fujifilm, and they've been partnered with us for a while, so they've been about a year or so we've had. Have them stood up over there. We're now tying them into partners like Intel and things like that, so we can scale that way as well, right, but it's, you know, the, I think, the big next step that we're very close to taking here. There are conversations taking as taking place as we speak. It's really tying in with the hardware manufacturer community, right, and those organizations getting packaged in with their, with their, with their, their hardware, so OEM type of relationships that we have. Everyone's about the software stack and the conversations I keep having with people all over this community is that it's all about the software, so it's the bundles that can take place. It's about the stacks that you can be in and things like that, the ease of deployment that organizations have if you get something that comes with X, y and Z, and things like that. So the scale that we're going to achieve is definitely going to come through there.

Kevin Homer: 27:53

I have to tell you, man, the response from the community has been insane, to say the least. I just I cannot believe the future is bright. Just let me say that. And the response that we get from these organizations is that, in typical sales fashion, you tend to have some good meetings, some bad meetings, and you know, I mean your 80-20 rule, all that kind of stuff, and it's really like we don't have many bad meetings around here.

Kevin Homer: 28:18

With what we're doing, it's pretty cutting edge, but that goes back to the fact that it's also baked, so it's not cutting edge, bleeding edge, as much as it's cutting edge and just like the stuff is a little bit ahead of its time. And people are seeing that and they're going wow, we can really accelerate what we're doing here. So with those conversations with those manufacturers with the size of a TD Cinex and others that'll come down the road, we really think that that's going to take off. So international will be part of that, but there's so much to do right here in the States that that's where my primary focus is initially.

Maciej: 28:55

Got it. If you were to give anyone starting the channel go-to-market strategy piece of advice, what would you tell?

Kevin Homer: 29:05

them? I think a lot of. It's a really interesting question. See, you told me we're doing this on the fly. You should have sent me that one ahead of time, all right.

Kevin Homer: 29:13

So I think the answer to that is I think it's really important about how complicated the sale of your product is. So if you have a product that is very complex and it's hard to sell, that's a little bit more of a challenge for the channel. So when you have that, you might be able to go just the traditional reseller route instead of DISD. Because you're looking for the partners that you're really getting in bed with right and it's going to be, you know, maybe a couple 10 that you work with that fully buy into what you're doing. They're going to go through certification classes and training and all that stuff. That's really deep because it's complex. Solution to understand and sell Right With our product. Keep going back to our product generate right, the AI assistant. The beauty of that product is that the complexity is under the covers, so it's it's simple to understand upfront.

Kevin Homer: 30:06

Some competitive differentiators like being able to run locally. So it's simple to understand up front. Some competitive differentiators like being able to run locally, so you don't have to connect to the internet. You can run this on an AIPC, right, and you can have it offline, which is great for security and compliance companies, right, you get the healthcare finance those organizations. I feel like the data security and compliance companies are at odds with the business divisions because the business is like we need to use these things so we can become more efficient and they're like, yeah, but that thing's connected to the internet and there's a risk of data leakage and all that stuff. So with Generate, we run offline.

Kevin Homer: 30:44

So organizations it's very easy, a couple of those things. A reseller can wrap their head around the competitive differentiators of their product and quickly take that to market. You don't need a three-week training certification to wrap your head around that. So if you have a complex product, one that's a little bit harder to understand and it's a whole learning process, I would say you just need to look at the product that you're selling and the company you're taking to market. That's really the key. That just need to look at the product that you're selling and the company you're taking to market. That's really the key that you need to look at in terms of whether you're going distribution or a straight reseller.

Maciej: 31:18

Yeah, that's probably the key component to me. Excellent, thank you. That's a valuable piece of advice and I told you about this one ahead of time, so I hope you do have an answer. There's the no negotiable question that is being asked on this podcast, and it's what's the one thing you wish you knew before you started your career in channel.

Kevin Homer: 31:39

Well, I think I wish I didn't battle so hard to accept the model. You think it was hard for me to accept the reseller side? How about distribution, where I was then told there was another slice of the pie. So I went kicking and screaming to the channel. Then I finally adopted it. And here comes the same guy over the top to say, oh wait, well, if you get distribution, I'm like, wait a minute, there's somebody else that's going to want part of the sale. So I wish that I could have gotten there a little bit earlier. It didn't take me too long to get there.

Kevin Homer: 32:08

But I think just really getting to understand the fact that as a salesperson, you really have to look at the numbers at scale. If you start looking at them on a one-to-one basis, you're never going to get to the channel. If you start doing the math and getting your calculator out on one or two deals, what you have to do is get to understand how many, how many organizations does that person know? Let's say you are my channel partner, right? Yeah, and there was a deal where I could take a direct and make 20% more margin, or whatever it's going to be right, I'm going to get 20% more. You're never going to work with me again if I do that to you.

Kevin Homer: 32:46

No you just broke the trust Right. So now what if you have trusted relationships with five other vendors, If we then work together and close two more deals? Now I have three customers. So especially with smaller companies, where customer count matters, it's not just revenue, but it's customer count. When you're sitting there trying to show the market, your market adoption, I mean clicking that button to add one more customer that matters. So now you have three customers instead of one, Whereas if I go into those customers and we ever cross paths again and they're a trusted advisor, they'll just tell the company we're a terrible company to work with.

Maciej: 33:24

Yeah.

Kevin Homer: 33:25

You might lose that deal and have no idea why you lost it. It's because you burned the channel in the in the past.

Maciej: 33:30

So that's right and it it's. It's interesting because I I remember being being in that, you know, in that direct sales um motion and when partner came along, you know, colleagues of mine were like, well, no, I'm not giving that away, I don't care that it's a deal registration. This was a lead that I generated, a lot of work went into it. But like, no, you look at this as an investment. You've given away 10 points on of your commission on that one deal. It's going to come back tenfold. Right, and that's how I think a lot of companies who have both direct and indirect selling motions. They really should bring those teams together and get them talking. Don't keep them siloed, because if you keep them siloed they're going to keep fighting. I totally agree with that. There's always going to be conflict.

Kevin Homer: 34:23

That's a really good point. Yeah, that's a really good point. No-transcript go. Oh, now they haven't closed anything. It's sitting down and saying let's get a meeting together to go through your list and identify who some other good targets are, so then you get more leads that come in and you can really see the benefit that way.

Maciej: 35:06

Perfect. And on that bombshell, Kevin, thank you so very much for coming on. I am really happy that I can add you to my network of channel professionals and that you were kind enough to share your experience and your insights with my audience. I really appreciate you coming on.

Kevin Homer: 35:25

Yeah Well, thanks back to you. I appreciate you having me and love the work you do, so thank you.

Maciej: 35:32

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