Transcript

John:     This TAM is so big and this shift from on-prem to cloud is, you said it right, it is Haley’s Comet, it’s the IP revolution all over again. And you get to take advantage of this maybe once, sometimes twice if you are beyond lucky in your lifetime in business three times. And I believe that’s where we are.

Announcer:        Welcome to the Software Channel Partner Podcast where you’ll hear leaders of partner programs talk about their greatest challenges and most successful solutions. And now your host Louis Gudema, the president of revenue & associates.

Louis:    Welcome to the Software Channel Partner Podcast where we talk with leaders in software partner programs to learn about what’s working today. And if you like what you hear in the podcast, please leave a review on Apple podcast, Google, Spotify, or whatever service you’re using to listen to it that’ll help others find the podcast too.

Today I’m talking with John DeLozier, senior Vice President and Global Channel Chief at 8×8. John has worked in the technology field for about 25 years. He’s been a VAR and a partner and has had senior roles in the channel programs at Unify, CenturyLink and 8×8, so John’s been involved with the channel on every side. He’s also won many industry awards, including being named a 2019 CRN Channel Chief. John, welcome to the podcast.

John:     Hey Louis. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Louis:    So on your LinkedIn profile, you call yourself a “culture musician”. What do you mean by that?

John:     Well, you know, it’s amazing, isn’t it in this business that we talk about the technology and we talk about the sales motions and routes to market and all those things. But from my perspective, it always comes down to the people. And with the people it always comes down to relationships, and to me a community of relationships builds a culture. And so I pride myself in that. You know, I sit in a room as, you know, with many PhDs and guys and gals that have degrees, you know, 20 times what I’ve had. But when it comes to culture and relationships and people, that’s really what I do. So I pride myself on that and bringing those organizations together.

Louis:    Yeh. Over and over again, you know, the same thing is true in terms of digital marketing, all that sort of thing. People can get really obsessed with analytics or tools or things of that sort, but it really comes down to there’s a human at the other end and you’ve got to connect with them and treat them right. And I’ve certainly heard that from many of the channel leaders I’ve talked to on the podcast, and even on the partner side, that ultimately it’s about human relationships. So how do you think that culture graphics affects building a global channel program? How do you apply that at 8×8?

John:     Yeh, you know from a culture graphic perspective, I wrote an article that was published around this. And you know, the old adage of, you know, we show up at a building and sit at a desk for eight hours a day and work for the same company for 40 years and culture’s instilled into the organization from the CEO down and that’s the way it is. Those things just, it’s just not that way anymore. We have to be cognizant of that human element we just talked about. We have to be cognizant of the relationships and the way people work today, which is totally different than when I got into the business.

Louis, I’m a little bit, you know, I’m a little bit of a Haley’s Comet in respect to, in my generation I remember what it was like to be dropped off at an office building and handing out business cards. And having enough change in my pocket to get to the next payphone, right in case somebody paged me. And you know, today, you know, we have more technology in our pocket then Apollo 11 had. So it’s interesting, isn’t it? We have to really pay attention to these kinds of things. 8×8 is that kind of company. It starts truly with our CEO, Vik Verma. And Vik’s instilled in all of us, although we do have the discipline of a hierarchy in our organization we all work differently. We’re all from different places but the red thread is success for 8×8 in the cloud space. So it’s really an interesting concept that people need to pay attention to.

Louis:    Okay. And I want to talk more about 8×8 and what you’re doing in a minute but first, please fill us in a bit more on your career path. You know you’ve been on every side of the channel. So what have you seen, what do you love about working with the channel from the vendor side?

John:     Yeh. You know, Louis, I started out in this thing as a kid. And you know, as a senior in college is really when I got into the business. And I’ve been blessed along the way to meet so many great people and work with so many great people. Some of those still with us in the industry, some of them not, some of them I used to work for and now they work for me. Some of them I used to work with and now we work together again, but it’s been a crazy ride.

You know I started out starting a services business in the Avaya space. Our company ACT became the system integration and application development company for Avaya throughout the US with regards to contact center, and then just over time that morphed into different things. We sold that to a great company called Cross Telecom, which was one of Avaya’s largest VARs. And then we sold that to Arrow Electronics, which as you know is a global distributor of technology. And then eventually moving on to suppliers like CenturyLink and Unify and now of course 8×8.

So I’ve got a different perspective, Louis. You know I’ve seen the channel and I’ve seen the way we do business in this industry from every single aspect. And so I think that’s very helpful as a global channel leader, you know, understanding where partners’ heads are when it comes to the relationship, you know not only with suppliers but what they need to bring to their customers. So I’m really into that. I really have tried to parlay that experience into the customer experience, which obviously translates to the way our company treats partners. So it’s been a fun ride.

Louis:    You must’ve been very good at ACT and what you did to be the largest Avaya service provider.

John:     Yeh. It was real quick on that one. It was fun. I had a, I was blessed with a partner that just loved the technology. You know, we always said he was the DJ and I was the rapper. His name is Jerry Perkins. He owns a company called Symbee Technologies today. But we had a great partnership. It started there, two guys, you know, building a company out of the dirt and we showed up every day and clocked in and clocked out — sometimes didn’t clock out — and just, you know built that thing over 16 years to 140 employees and a pretty substantial little small business. So pretty proud of that.

Louis:    Yeh. When you’re the owner, you can’t always clock out. So what does, let’s talk about 8×8. What does 8×8 do and who do you sell to?

John:     Yeh, the 8×8, it just, what a story. You know 8×8’s a 30-year-old company, but it feels like a startup. We are a company that built a platform that is purpose built for the cloud around UKAS, CCAS, video, obviously anything in the contact center space. We just acquired a company called Wavecell in Singapore which adds CPAS to our portfolio. But again, it’s not a hybrid situation. It wasn’t we were an on-prem based company and we decided that we wanted to play in the cloud space. We have 227 patents around a platform that was again purpose-built for the cloud. And as you know, the TAM in the cloud today, we don’t know, is it 50 billion, 80 billion, 100 billion, whatever it is. But we do know that if you add up every supplier, us and all of our competition, we’d make up maybe 11% of that TAM. So as these companies are moving to the cloud, we are right in that mix. And as a company that puts channel first, we’re excited with regards to our partners, bringing those opportunities to us and knocking them down with them.

Louis:    There is a huge transition happening now and it’s kind of one of those once in a generation opportunities for companies. And other guests on the podcast have talked about that too in some other industries. So where’s that name 8×8 come from?

John:     Believe it or not, 8×8 is a video pixel and it’s a codex around a video pixel and it’s from a couple of decades ago obviously, as 8×8 started really heavy into the video industry, in the video space and it’s just kind of stuck. And so why change it? The brand has certainly in the last couple of years become a lot more recognized in our world, right? So 8x8s pretty unique and we love it.

Louis:    Yeh. And if people who are listening want to find out the website it is 8×8.com. Let’s talk about the channel there then. How many partners does 8×8 have and roughly what percentage of your revenue comes from the channel?

John:     Yeh, no that’s a great question. Let me preface it by saying this, our company is a channel first company. 8×8 believes in the channel, we believe that is the way to the marketplace from a cloud perspective that comes from my boss, our CEO Vik Verma. And its really rare by the way, that an SVP of global channel reports directly into the CEO that is a big part of our company and our DNA. And so we’re excited about that because it allows me to have the span of control and the ability to affect the partner community very quickly as we change things and add things, et cetera. But the answer to the question is, is that you know, in the last year and a half, two years since I’ve been here, we basically have built a new partner program from scratch in that we’ve attacked through an award-winning a program called Elev8.  And that’s our program that houses all of our partnerships, whether it’s a master, a sub, a VAR, an alliance partner, et cetera. So over the course of that year and a half, we’ve increased our reach in the master community from five master agents to 17 and that’s plenty by the way to cover the market space in the U.S.  In the UK of course you add on a whole different flavor because VAR is kind of the way to the market there. And also from a subagent perspective, we’ve gone from 200, 300 sub-agents to well over a thousand. So we’re really committed to the channel in that master subspace. From a VAR perspective, you’ve probably heard the words CloudFuel, which is our partnership with ScanSource, which folds into that VAR play. We’ve added just in the last 40 days, 10 VARs to the program.

So, you know, again, we don’t distinguish a route to market, if you’re a VAR and that’s the way you want to go to market, terrific. If you’re a master or a sub, love it. You want to partner with us in an alliance opportunity with a sell-with or sell-through, terrific. We’re going to do that as well. So really the partner program Louis in the last year and a half has tripled in size and to finish off the question, not only has it tripled in size, but today seven out of 10 of our deals go through the channel. And so I know there are three deals left that don’t, I couldn’t name them to you. I mean they keep telling me that we’re only 70%, whereas a year and a half ago we were 40. I couldn’t tell you where that other 30% is coming from. But I will tell you that the channel at 8×8 right now is on fire.

Louis:    Yeh. Well, if you’ve almost doubled your percentage of contribution to revenue just in the last 18 months, that’s huge.

John:     Yeh, it is, it is. Again, that commitment starts with the top. Our board believes in the channel. My boss, our CEO, look all over the website, look all over the web, LinkedIn, et cetera. You can see Vik’s comments on the channel and we’re not stopping. We’re very, very aggressive. We’re excited about the opportunity. And you know 8×8 will continue to be a channel first company.

Louis:    So what’s different about Elev8 — that channel program — than what you were doing before and why did you make the changes?

John:     You know, I always say to my team, it could be, it’s real easy to be a mile wide and an inch deep. I learned that when I was really young and what that means is, is the best of intentions are out there, but you can get super busy and get scrambled, you know, especially in the channel, you know, as you try to take your solutions to market. And so we wanted to give it a brand. We wanted to give it a name. We wanted to have a program, a headquarters if you will for the channel where all channel business is parked. And so we thought Elev8, you know, just in the name itself gave us that symbol of elevation of the channel in the fact that we’re taking it up another notch and another level. And so now it’s tangible. And so we’re excited about the Elev8 program, by the way not just here in the US but in the UK. I know you know we do business in Australia and New Zealand and now in Asia PAC. Even more significant with our Wavecell acquisition.

Louis:    So nice clever inclusion of the 8 in the Elev8 program name. You also back in February, launched a new partner portal PartnerXchange. What was behind that?

John:     Yeh. So thank you by the way with regards to Elev8. I’ve got to give Tina Smith the credit, that is our VP of marketing in the channel. She’s phenomenal — her and her team. Yeah. And I couldn’t figure out how to get an 8 in PartnerXchange Louis. Don’t think I didn’t think about it. The PartnerXchange is awesome. You know, it’s a portal, it’s a marketplace where all of our partners, regardless of route to market, are able to go in and conduct business with us. And I always say I love mailbox money and what I mean by that is, you go to sleep at night and something just shows up, right? And so that PartnerXchange is never closed. It’s always open. It is a place where our partners, regardless of route to market, can come from a quote to cash perspective and do business with us. So they can pull quotes, they can deliver a business that has been sold, they can get reporting packed with all of different analytics. It really is the gateway for the partner community into 8×8.

So we’re really proud of PartnerXchange, it’s come a long way just in a couple of years. I give the credit to my operations team headed up by a gal by the name April Miller who also is by the way and is it the channel partners publication that gives out the top 50 people you don’t know, but should in the channel?

Louis:    Yeh.

John:     April was in that. Yeah April was in that publication and her work with her team in the PartnerXchange community has been brilliant.

Louis:    I’ve had a few of the people who are in that list on the program and it’s one of those, you kind of want to win that but you kind of don’t want to win it also. You want to be better known then that.

John:     Listen April is one of those people just real quick, she’s one of those people that just makes such a significant contribution to the channel here at 8×8 and a huge difference. She absolutely does not want to win anything. She is very humble, and very happy with her role here. And I think it was a surprise to her but a nice honor, so we bought her a $10 Starbucks gift card, so I think she’s happy with that.

Louis:    Some people are quite happy to be quietly doing a great job in the background. So a lot of the channel leaders that I’ve talked to, it seems like have launched new portals just in the last 12 or 18 months and often talk about the portal being their most important piece of channel tech. Is that how you see it?

John:     Yeh, I mean I wouldn’t disagree with that. I mean as far as being one of the most important pieces of channel tech because we’re so relationally driven and because we’re selling and pushing and promoting a platform, our X series platform here at 8×8, it is critical to get orders placed to understand what you’re ordering, what you aren’t.

So I think, yeah, I think you’re going to see a huge focus as we move forward on those kinds of marketplaces where our partners can conduct business with us freely and don’t need that human interaction every single time. I think you’ll see a lot more, lot more company suppliers contributing towards that. I will tell you it’s not easy. These partners all have different ways they do business, different routes to market, different sales motions, different reporting packages. They actually tally their commissions differently and want to receive their checks differently. So it’s a difficult endeavor. And so I’m really proud of this team to bring PartnerXchange to the world.

Louis:    What they talk about is that partners want the same kind of consumer-like experience. They want to be able to report their opportunities quickly, to report their closed deals quickly, to get marketing materials or whatever information they need quickly, and not have to wait around for anything, and that’s where that partner experience and the portal, how that contributes to it can be so critical. But what about other technology? You know, and I know you put the relationships first, but are there other technologies that you think are important when you have a global partner program like 8×8? Aa PRM? Through channel marketing automation? Something else that you think is really critical?

John:     Yeh, I could tell you the most critical piece of technology that is useful in our world, in our partner community is something that we need to take it up a notch and effectively do business on a whole other level is our own very own X Series. So our collaboration platform in our meetings platform, which I’m sure you’ve heard has a whole freemium piece to it is critical in the way we do business.

It’s awesome to be able to log in to our tool with our customers, with our partners, be able to look at them in the eyes every day from a video perspective, share documents with them, record meetings for those that missed it. And be able to do that not only seamlessly from the desktop, but you know, I’ve got an appointment I got to get to, let me just transfer this to my iPhone and be able to go from a mobility perspective and just pick up in the meeting like nothing happened. I mean, how many calls have you been on in the last decade where the call starts out for the first five or 10 minutes, Hey, are you on? Is everybody on, who’s on you know?

Louis:    Right.

John:     We have little simple things like that Louis that we judge the experience by and I will tell you that at 8×8 from a collaboration perspective, from a meetings perspective, that’s something we never even think about here. So I would say that the most important piece of tech at this company when it comes to working effectively with the channel and with customers is our very own platform.

Louis:    That video conferencing, that’s a pretty new, that freemium video conferencing that’s a pretty new part of your offering, isn’t it?

John:     Yeh, it really is. We want to bring this platform to the world. And we’ve had some competition that’s tried to do this, you know they’ve made it fairly easy for customers. But you know after a period of time or after or a feature that it’s not available you know, it gets shut down or they, you know, suddenly this big red pop up comes up on your screen and says you have to swipe a credit card. 8×8’s meeting platform is nothing like that. We give away a product, a piece of the product that will never expire. And if it’s what you need to handle your meetings with globally, you can use that for as long as you want.

Now, if you do want some advanced features and there’s a long list of them, that’s the time when you’ll sign up and you’ll come into the family from a financial standpoint. But we just think that the collaboration platform is so powerful that if we give it away to the world, that it will come back to us.

Louis:    That’s the standard freemium model of having a premium version that you do pay for. But you know, I’ve heard it compared to Zoom and GoToMeeting and some of those other leaders, so it sounds like a terrific new tool for you. So you know, when you’re looking at, you know, you’ve had this huge growth in the contribution of the channel to revenue at 8×8 and obviously that’s one of the analytics that you’re looking at, one of the data points. What other, do you have a dashboard? What kind of analytics do you look at once a day, once a week, once a month to see how your program’s doing?

John:     People would be surprised to know, you know, of course you and I met at one of the conferences and you know, I do a lot of public speaking, and a lot of keynotes. We do a lot of fun stuff at 8×8. Our Educate and Elev8 seminars and a lot of stage work, a lot of podcasts, a lot of stuff like this, right, I love this stuff. What folks wouldn’t know is that I am a data junkie. Like I love the data, I love the analytics, I love the dashboards. And one of the biggest jobs here in the channel at 8×8 is to create opportunity for sales and then ultimately contribute with our sales professionals in closing those opportunities, et cetera but demand generation is a focus here.

And so for me, I want to understand what masters are working with us, which masters are positioning us outside of our competition, which is important to me. We’re not quote jockeys over here, right. I want to understand which sub-agents in which communities in which regions of the world are working again most closely with which masters with 8×8.

I want to understand how VARs are going to market, what verticals are they attacking, how much healthcare business do we have versus retail, those kinds of things. So yes, I have a monitor in front of me and three to the side giving me real-time analytics daily, not only from PartnerXchange and our portal. But really understanding from a demand generation perspective, how our teams are performing and how that business translates into close opportunities. It’s almost like a Moneyball approach Louis to what we’re doing over here. And so it’s not just all about being on stage and where are my Air Jordans. It’s about really understanding the data and the analytics and being able to attack the right places.

Louis:    That’s a great image. You sound almost like a bond trader or someone with all his screens around him.

John:     Yes. Yeh, it’s pretty interesting stuff. We have, the good news is, is that 8×8 you know, we’re based in San Jose and we have the best of the best coming to work for us. 2200 employees by the way. And I think its 50 different countries now, I mean it’s just insane. I can’t remember exactly how many it is. And so we get the best of the best right out of school. And these guys and gals just, they’ve forgotten more about analytics and data than I’ll ever know. So it’s nice to be able to just look at those dashboards daily.

Louis:    So at Channel Partners Evolution in September you and Janet Schijns did a session together. And she was recently a guest on the podcast and she talked about a study she did with 360Insights last year that they found that half of MDF funds spent on digital marketing by partners was wasted. And we talked about that and she attributes this in part to a lack of marketing skill among many partners. Do you see that marketing skill gap in the channel?

John:     I think the answer to that question from my perspective is not as much maybe because you know Janet has a purview now with JS Consulting of touching a lot of different types of partners nationally, globally and maybe a whole different slice than we’re working with here at 8×8. It’s generally Louis always the same, right. It’s the 80/20 rule. Twenty percent of our masters are the best of the best. That 20% have the best marketing people in the business.

I can think of a few that are just off the top of my head that are innovative, that are running with us, that are trying to take things to the next level. They’re not showing up, you know with their hands out for the proverbial MDF fund for a booze cruise from back in the day, but they are showing up and saying, Hey, let’s do some, let’s do some 8×8 Educate and Elev8 days. Let’s also do some unique events where we can supply leads to partners and good old-fashioned blitz days, they work.

We show up at a partner’s headquarters with our 8×8 meetings platform and an 85-inch screen and the software, we leave it there. And we conduct our blitz day the entire day from that platform. And so you can imagine what that is like afterwards. Also, I want to say that I think some of the onus of that is truly on the supplier. So I’d like to, I’d like to maybe in my viewpoint shift the comment from, let’s not talk about so much with the partners, which marketing professionals aren’t or are doing a great job, but there’s a huge accountability factor on the supplier. You know, we’re big boys and girls here at 8×8 and it’s very difficult to pull the wool over our eyes.

And so we really plug in with our partners instead of just a blank check for MDF, it’s how can we integrate in with you and reach your sub-agents, reach your partners, and reach your customers. What’s the most effective way to do that? If it’s the right way, we’ll open the kimono and open the checkbook over here. If it’s the wrong way, we just won’t do it. And it’s pretty, pretty easy from my perspective to find out who the players are and who the pretenders are pretty quickly. And by the way, our partners know that about us. So you know, you’ll try it maybe once with us and that’ll be it. You have one shot.

Louis:    Okay. So I want to ask you two questions that are variations of what I sometimes ask when I’m hiring people. First, what’s a partner campaign or program that you’ve done that you think was especially successful, that you’re especially proud of? And it could be at another company before 8×8 or it could be at 8×8.

John:     Louis, life didn’t even, life wasn’t even in play before 8×8. I can’t even remember back then.

Louis:    I get that sense.

John:     This year and a half has been like a decade, are you kidding me? No. It’s real easy for me. We have two things here that we’ve done. Our marketing team as I told you before are very, very aggressive. We’ve work together a long time, both here and in some other companies. And we came up with two things. Number one is what we call our Elev8 blitz days. That’s where we come into a partner, typically it’s one of two things. It’s either a national master and so we have a national blitz day where literally imagine 8×8 comes into their headquarters and takes over the headquarters. We pepper it with banners and balloons and confetti and snacks and hats and shirts and mugs.

And we bring in our own hardware, you know, in conjunction with sometimes our friends at Polycomm, where we’re bring in monitors and video phones and devices and we’ll teach them how to use our collaboration software. And then we’ll hit, we’ll literally hit, this’ll date me — I still, by the way, Louis, whenever I record a show, I still talk to my wife, I ask her if she taped it — so you’ve got to remember I’m a child of the 80s but you know.

Louis:    There is some language that doesn’t die easily.

John:     Exactly. So we hit the phones is what I was going to say. And you know, we really do. We hit the phones, we bring lists with us, they provide their own list. It’s an Elev8 blitz day. You cannot believe the deal registrations and the pipeline that we create from our Elev8 blitz days. Phenomenal. And so we love doing that with our national partners. We’ll come in and we’ll do it regionally with subagents as well, if it makes sense. It’s a beautiful thing. The other thing that we do is called Elev8 and Educate.

And so we’ll come into unique cities and we will, we just did one in Orlando last week by the way. We had 65 partners attend from all over the East Coast and we’ll sit down with them for a day and we’ll basically give them the 8×8 story with hands-on approach again to the technology and show them what we’re all about. Look, here’s what our meanings platform looks like and here’s how it works, here’s how it can be most effective, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s those two things for sure for me would be exactly how I would approach the marketplace and they’re the things that I’m the most proud of, you know, from a program perspective here at 8×8.

Louis:    Well, those blitz days sound great. I haven’t heard that before and it sounds like both really valuable and a lot of fun way to work with your partners. So let me ask you then the flip side, and maybe this will take you back to before 8×8, what’s a partner program that you worked on that wasn’t successful and why do you think that was?

John:     Louis there has never been a partner program, yeah, yeah, [crosstalk] no, I’m just teasing kind of. You know here’s the thing, I don’t think it’s so much about the campaign’s not working. I mean obviously you try different things. We’ve all been doing this a long, long time. So will we experiment with something? I always say that we’ll jump off the cliff and not knowing where we’re going to land. But we always know the height of the cliff and we always know the wind direction and we always know the construct of the soil and those kinds of things, and who’s up there with us right. So for 8×8 I would say that it’s more of adapting to change in the marketplace with the program and with the types of things that we bring to market. It’s surviving setbacks when it doesn’t work and it’s exploiting the new opportunities when it does.

So those three things are really what I kind of guide it by. I think we’ve seen the traditional metals program change over time, it’s not so much the quantity of how much it’s really about the quality. So what are you going for in the marketplace from a collaboration perspective, is every single customer a good customer? Where are you focusing in contact center? What kind of list and lead generation makes sense for those Elev8 and Educate and Elev8 blitz days, those kinds of things. So every single day here we try something probably that isn’t as effective as we’d like it to be, but I will tell you that we learn from it very, very quickly. And when we learn from it, we modify it and we adapt and either A, put it to bed quick or B, take it to market in a different way than we did before. So we’re pretty, we’re pretty aggressive and we’re pretty attentive to those kinds of things.

Louis:    Yeh, that’s the key thing. I think you either succeed or you learn and then you have to take those learnings and really apply them to get it right the next time. I was interviewing Balaji Subramanian from ServiceMax and he was talking about how important it is to launch programs. And you know, Steve Jobs, one of his quotes was ‘Artists ship.’ But Balaji was talking about maybe you only have it 70% right but it’s directionally right. And you do it and you see what works and you see what you can improve on, what you can learn for next time and that’s the way that fast nimble operations have to go.

John:     Yeh, no, I couldn’t agree more. It’s a Microsoft way, right? I think that somebody in the inside at Microsoft said one time that we know every time we launch a piece of software that we’ve probably only got it what 70% right? And it’s going to fail in the marketplace, and we kind of expect that and we want to understand why it did and how it did and use this is to get better. And so I don’t know that we apply that here from a 70% perspective, but I will tell you that I couldn’t agree more that you definitely have to show up and try different things and see what happens. Also, I will tell you from an 8×8 perspective, imitation is the greatest form of flattery. If you go on social media and look at Twitter and LinkedIn and some of the things that we’ve done over the last two years, and we’re starting to see our peers start to do the same things, that is also a checkmark in the good box that I think we are on to something.

Louis:    Yeh. Yeh. So John, what should I have asked you that I didn’t? What keeps you up at night?

John:     What keeps me up, I don’t know that you didn’t ask anything. First of all, I love talking to you. Thank you. I hope to do this again with you. It’s a great podcast. I went on your website and listened in on a few of my friends that have recorded with you before. So good stuff.

What keeps me up at night is this opportunity, Louis, this TAM, you know, again, I just saw a stat, I think I shared this at Evolution where Harvard did a study where 89% of companies believe, 89% of companies believe that they have to compete on the customer experience. 80% of CEOs believe that they are competing on the customer experience and 8% of the customers agreed. And to me, that is what keeps me up at night. That margin, that disparity. Where there’s margin, you know, where there’s mystery, there’s margin. Janet always says that too, by the way.

And that’s what keeps me up. This TAM is so big and this shift from on-prem to cloud is, you said it right, it is Halley’s Comet. It’s the IP revolution all over again. And you get to take advantage of this maybe once, sometimes twice if you are beyond lucky in your lifetime in business three times. And I believe that’s where we are. And so really what keeps me up is how fast can we get there? Speed is critical for companies like mine. And so I want to continue to evangelize 8x8s story, that we’re purpose-built for the cloud, that we’re a partner first organization. And you know, I just want to get to the channel as quickly as possible with the story so they can get it to the customers and they can be successful because of it.

Louis:    All right. Terrific. So, John, how can people contact you if they want to know more about 8×8 or your partner program or other things that you’re working on or have talked about today?

John:     Yeh, I’m all over LinkedIn, publish several articles, run a bunch of videos and different things. So it’s easy to find me. You know, John Delozier, very easy. My email address, of course, always at 8×8 is john.delozier at 8×8.com and then you can hit me on Twitter as well at jldelozier3@twitter. So we’re very active in social media. Would love to hear from partners and from customers and peers alike.

Louis:    All right, great. And we’ll put that into the program notes on the https://revenueassociates.biz website. So thank you for joining us today, John.

John:     Louis, a pleasure. Your reputation precedes you. Always nice to talk to you. I hope it’s just the beginning for you and me and I really enjoy the time today.

Louis:    Well, thank you. It was terrific for you to take the time. As I do with all guests I’ll be sending you a copy of my Bullseye Marketing book in appreciation. It was recently named one of the best marketing plan books of all time.

So thank you for listening to the Software Channel Partner Podcast, and please subscribe and listen to future episodes.