Transcript

Lauren Duda:   (introduction)  We want to be able to have technology that works that way as well so it’s not a heavy lift for them to be able to come onboard. And I think that was one of the thoughts that we had in mind when we looked for simplification. When we looked for making our training pretty easy to get up and running from a sales accreditation standpoint, we were really just asking for about an hour or two’s worth of training — just enough to kind of get them in. We tried to make a lot of things very self-service so that the reality is when they learn of an opportunity, that’s when they go and try to find information. And you can’t really force them through a lot of big hurdles right out of the gate or they’ll lose interest.

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 Gudema:  Welcome to the Software Channel Partner Podcast, where we talk with leaders in software partner programs to learn about what’s working today. I’m Louis Gudema, the president of revenue & associates where we help companies grow faster by helping their channel partners grow faster. 

Today I’m talking with Lauren Duda, senior director of worldwide partner marketing and development at Couchbase. Before Couchbase, Lauren had about 15 years of experience, both in the channel and in product marketing at Symantec, Citrix, including the GoToMeeting and other GoTo products, and Adaptive Insights. Lauren has received a number of awards including a 2018 and 2019 CRN Women of the Channel recognition. And the Couchbase partner program has received CRN’s five star rating. Lauren, welcome to the podcast.

Lauren: Thanks so much Louis. Happy to be here.

Louis:    You have kind of a unique Twitter handle @svzrth. Is that random or does that have some sort of special meaning?

Lauren: No, it does have a special meaning and made a lot more sense when I drove a Prius. It basically is my current license plate and it has little spaces in between the V and the Z and R. So it’s meant to show, ‘saves the earth’. That was the intention of it. So I just kind of removed the spaces for ease of ease of use, but ‘save the earth’

Louis:    Okay. Got It. So please tell us about your career path, and what brought you to your leadership role in the channel at Couchbase today?

Lauren: Yeh. It’s a good question and it’s kind of a fun story. I think. I’ve been focused on partners to some degree my entire career in tech. I actually started off at a DMR or a reseller years ago in sales. So I understand the plight of salespeople for sure and it’s a tough job. But I had an increased interest in being able to be on the product side of things and help our sales teams understand why they should be interested in selling or recommending certain solutions to their customers, and found that that was kind of a nice area for me that spoke to what I liked focusing on.

From there I actually moved over and started working for vendors and spent, you know, over 11 years at Symantec, kind of bouncing around from everything from finance to partner programs. And then six years or so in product marketing where I was really focused on taking our solutions in the security side of the space out to customers through channel partners. So it was kind of a unique role. Nobody in the other product teams at the time was really focused on that type of solution. But we were so heavily channel-driven there that it made sense to have kind of somebody just carrying that flag for partners and focusing on what was the value prop, how do partners need to take this out, what’s the messaging they need to know about?

And from there I got more and more solidified on just looking after our partner community, making sure that wherever I was I was thinking about — and championing partners — for our internal resources as well as for customers. There’s so much opportunity to grow a business by leveraging the channel. And I think sometimes internally people just have varied expertise on comfort level of working with partners. So there was a really great opportunity there for me to continue focusing on that.

So when I left Symantec, Citrix, I had a couple of different opportunities both in product marketing and channel marketing at Citrix and ran with both of those. And then went to a little bit smaller organization when I moved to Adaptive, who now interestingly enough is part of Workday. So things happen and companies grow, but it’s been a great opportunity to kind of see many different sides of the business but continually wave that partner flag.

Louis:    So even when you were at Symantec in a product marketing role, you were very focused on the channel?

Lauren: I was very focused on the channel and Symantec I mean at the time I think 85% of the business was going through partners. And I don’t know how much that’s changed one way or another recently, but it was a primarily channel-driven business. And I think there was an opportunity for people to really focus on that, really having the channel work for them. And I think that was unique in the product team at the time.

Louis:    So before we get too far into this, why don’t you explain what Couchbase does? What you provide?

Lauren: Yeh, absolutely. So I mean in its easiest format, Couchbase is a database software company. So we can start at that level. But if you delve kind of lower one level further, we’re basically an enterprise-class multi-cloud, no SQL database. Does that make sense to everyone?

Louis:    Right, raise your hand if you have questions about that.

Lauren: Everyone knows what I am talking about.

Louis:    You have clients who are using it for massive, massive data projects, right?

Lauren: Yeh, absolutely. I mean, you think about traditional relational databases and how structured it is. The way that we’re really seeing data now and the kind of data that’s being created in the last 20 years is all this unstructured, distributed data that comes from social media and text messages and tons of other applications. That’s really where this, no SQL or not only SQL databases really come into play.

Louis:    And Couchbase is a combination of two companies that came together about 10 years ago, but it looks like the partner program really started to take off or has really started to grow just in the last two and a half years since you joined the company. So does this reflect a change of strategy for Couchbase to invest more heavily in the channel?

Lauren: Well, I think we really saw that there was an opportunity for us to expand more into global markets and to look for opportunities to create new routes to market, and that’s where our partners really could come in there, as well as technology. We had had technology partnerships prior to having ‘Partner Engage’, which is the name of our program. But we really saw an opportunity there to expand that ecosystem that we had with our partners and really create new joint solutions that were very strategic to look for those opportunities to not only help grow and scale our business, but our partners business. And of course to provide much greater availability for our customers to be able to access Couchbase and also benefit from those solutions.

Louis:    So what’s an ideal partner profile for Couchbase? Who are you looking for as a sales partner or an implementation partner, who are you looking for?

Lauren: So I think we found that the regional system integrator is probably our perfect partner profile, is we’re looking for. We’ve got some great relationships with the Global System integrators as well. But when we look at companies who can really build a practice around this particular space and to build a practice around Couchbase, we find that those more boutique SIs are kind of our perfect niche partner. They’re a little bit smaller, they can move pretty quickly. They can engage and are willing to make investments in newer technologies and see the opportunity there and can really execute not only from a technology standpoint, but also in a lot of cases from a marketing standpoint, which is particularly interesting to me. They’re a little tricky to find I think which has been some of our challenges over the years. But for the ones that we’ve been partnering with, we’ve had really great early success.

Louis:    So when you say a little bit smaller, what size companies are these typically?

Lauren: Gosh, we see all different ranges. I mean, in some cases they can be thousands of employees. In some cases it’s 10 to 20. So they really vary in size depending on the region that they’re focused on. We do see quite a few who will work primarily proactively within the country that they’re in, but reactively beyond those borders.

Louis:    Okay. So you hear a talk these days about a shadow channel?

Lauren: Right.

Louis:    So are you primarily focused on partners who can transact and implement?

Lauren: The way that we have our programs structured is the compensation kind of ranges depending on the amount of effort that they put in. If they give us a great lead and that pans out, but we do the bulk of the work, there’s one level of commission. If they follow us through the sales cycle and continue to work with us to help us get the right introductions and get further along in the sales cycle, then they can get a higher level of the commission for that.

So we’re very interested in that. I think in our perfect world, we’re definitely looking for partners who also can do the implementation, who can do some consulting, and who are interested in building unique solutions with our technology. But we have structured our program in such a way that it really does allow for all different partner types. And we see the benefit in all those different partner types because, you know, we want to make sure that our customers can find us with whatever partners they work with today. So we really are open to all levels and we’ll continue to look at refining our program as we move forward depending on the needs of our partner ecosystem.

Louis:    So what kind of company, if the system integrators your kind of ideal partner, what kind of company is a good influencer who might be bringing you leads but not actually be doing the implementation?

Lauren: So in some cases they might even be a reseller where they’re not really doing implementation but they want to give us a lead and/or they end up actually reselling and doing the paperwork. In some cases it’s another ISV. We’ve had some relationships with some of our ISVs who are interested in giving us leads but aren’t doing any kind of implementation since they’re focused on their own technology. And in some cases its smaller consultants. So it really ranges.

Louis:    Do those leads typically then go to your direct sales team or do they go to other partners?

Lauren: Yeh, so today for the most part, those would go to the direct team. There might be some lead sharing for the implementation piece because we really do work with our partners on those opportunities on the professional services side. Once they’re trained up and they’ve had a chance to really embrace our technology and are comfortable with that, then we certainly do pass those along to partners as well. But today we’re not proactively pushing along leads to our partners. But I know I’m definitely interested in doing that as we continue to grow the program.

Louis:    Yeh. When you say today, it sounds like you’re thinking, “but tomorrow more of this will go to partners.”

Lauren: Yeh, I think we continue to look for ways to add value for our partners in the program. I know that there’s an interest in that historically from a lot of companies. I think today that a lot of our partners are looking for services opportunities, absolutely. But you know, I think when it comes to the lead sharing, we’re definitely open to that and try to have a feedback loop with our partners so that we can take that into account, discuss it. We’re small enough that it’s not that hard for us to make modifications and improvements to the program as we grow the business.

Louis:    What percentage of your revenue is coming from the channel now and what would it have been two years ago and what are you shooting for say two years from now?

Lauren: Yeh, so since we’re private, I probably won’t disclose the specific percentages, but I will tell you that we have doubled our contribution to the business from the channel since we launched the program. So we started off at a certain level, we’ve multiplied that by two and we’re continuing to see that growth path. So where we expect to be two years from now, I mean, I’d love to see that double again, but those numbers start getting large. So, we are definitely making investments in the channel and are continuing to leverage our partners to grow our business and to give them more opportunities on a very regular basis. So looking forward to continued growth there.

Louis:    So when you say doubling since you launched the program, you mean the Partner Engage program in?

Lauren: Correct.

Louis:    That was in January of 2018?

Lauren: That is right.

Louis:    Yeh. So tell me about that. You led the design and the launch of that, what went into developing that program and how did you optimize it for the kind of partners that you have?

Lauren: You know, I think I was lucky in that I had come from a few very channel-driven companies like Symantec, like Citrix, where I was able to think about those programs and all the wonderful things that we were able to offer at such scale. And had done a lot of work with CRN and thought, Hey, you know, what are the things that a good partner programs should have and how can we achieve that? — Even at the scale that we were. Which meant some things might have to be more manual instead of very, very automated. But we looked at, you know, how can we support all these different pieces that a good partner would typically want to be able to have, whether it’s training, having very competitive commission structure, and referral bonuses. Having some level of onboarding, having some personalization. And having some campaign support as well from a marketing standpoint.

Kind of went through all of those pieces in a perfect world and then thought about how can we keep it simple as well. Because we didn’t want there to be a huge roadblock in new partners being able to come on. We wanted it to be easy for people to get up and running and also give partners who really put a lot of skin in the game, some extra credit as it were. So we looked at a number of top programs and then built all those parameters around it that from our experience showed what a good program should have. We actually had done research on some of our closest competitors and found that it didn’t seem like many of them had any kind of similar program structure. So we really wanted to take advantage of that differentiation.

Louis:    You know, the channel, you’ve been in this for 15 or 20 years, and you’ve probably seen quite a lot of change, and especially in the last three or four years, how do you see the channel changing recently, especially, and how did that impact the design of Partner Engage?

Lauren: Yeh, that’s a really good question. I think one thing that I’ve seen again with my marketing hat on is that partners are looking for more things to be done for them if they can. They want things to be very easy. They’ve got a lot of different vendors that they’re working with. They don’t have a lot of time to put towards a ton of training and spending hours on certifications and completely focusing on just one or two partnerships. And you need to be able to provide a solution that can work in a number of different environments, right, because as more and more partners are having to move their business to working in a cloud environment, we want to be able to have technology that works that way as well. So it’s not a heavy lift for them to be able to come onboard. And I think that was one of the thoughts that we had in mind when we looked for simplification. When we looked for making our training pretty easy to get up and running from a sales accreditation standpoint. We were really just asking for about an hour or two’s worth of training, just enough to kind of get them in. We tried to make a lot of things very self-service so that the reality is is when they learn of an opportunity, that’s when they go and try to find information. And you can’t really force them through a lot of big hurdles right out of the gate or they’ll lose interest.

We also didn’t ask for any kind of financial commitment from partners at the beginning either, because again, we just wanted it to be easy and allow them to be able to get the information that they need when they need it. And that was all taken into account with the design of the program.

Louis:    What are the technologies that you think are most important in your program to help your partners succeed? You know, do you have a portal? Are you using through-channel marketing automation or other programs?

Lauren: When we first started, there was a very, very basic portal in place. When I first came onboard, I built basically an easy to access micro-site that just had a little bit of content and that was the end of it. Wppithin the last year we had an opportunity to put together more of a true content management system, something a little bit closer to a PRM that would work for our own internal sales teams as well as for our partners. So everybody was kind of accessing the same content from one portal on the backend. And then on the front end there is a version for our sales teams and a version for our partners. So that’s what we actually took on and it is a PRM system. We are utilizing certain aspects of it today, really focusing on the content piece as well as very easy links to get to training courses, online training, free training, that type of thing.

When it comes to the through channel demandgen, it’s definitely an area I’m very interested in turning on and using that functionality, it’s all there. But we’re really kind of listening to partners and hearing what they care about the most and taking that into consideration. Today not a lot of our partners are really pushing us for packaged campaigns yet, so they’re more interested in training, they’re more interested in use cases and that type of material. So we’re giving them what they’re asking for and as we continue to ramp up, that’s definitely on my roadmap to turn on some functionality around the campaigns in a box or through channel campaigns. The PRM solution that we have as well actually has concierge services, which is something that I’ve been hearing more and more about as almost a requirement from the channel in the last couple of years. So that’s kind of another one of those newer features that partners are asking for, where they have the ability to get help from an agency that’s local, potentially in local language, to be able to actually help create and run campaigns on their behalf, so that they’re not constantly worrying about the marketing piece.

Louis:    So it sounds like you launched or you didn’t have all your technology that you have today in place when you launched the Partner Engage program and you’ve been adding to that just in the 18 months since the program launched.

Lauren: Yeh, that’s right. We had, we did have a portal when we launched, but it was very, very basic, very manual. The one we have today has a much stronger search engine. It has much greater capabilities so that we can grow as the program grows.

Louis:    You can’t always have it perfect and it’s almost more of an agile approach to hear what the partners really want and add that to your technology into your portal as you’re growing it.

Lauren: Yeh, that’s exactly it. You don’t want to overwhelm and you don’t want to take on more than what you can really support, either. my team manages a lot of different aspects of the program beyond the portal piece. So we had to be, had to kind of balance out our resources with what we wanted to offer partners out of the gate. So we have the capability to do things on an as request basis, but if we see enough demand to have more automated campaigns, that’s the direction we’ll go.

Louis:    You have this strong background in partner marketing. What are some of the through-channel marketing programs that you’ve done, whether at Couchbase or at other companies before that you think were, you know, what’s one or two that you think were especially successful?

Lauren: So I know that at Symantec we were doing quite a few. I actually ran the tool and the program that managed that for partners, this is going kind of way back, but we worked really closely with product marketing. That was I think the most critical aspect of success here was to be able to work with the people who were really driving the content for those campaigns and adjust it in such a way that it was very easy for partners to be able to pick it up and run with it. When we look at our campaigns here at Couchbase, I look for the ones that are most successful, are direct with our end users. I work with our campaigns team and our demandgen team and say, Hey, you know, what are the campaigns that are most effective? What are the ones that are getting us the most interest?

And on a couple of occasions we would package those up a little manually and put them in along with basically a recording of the original webinar, put in an HTML invite. We’d put in qualifying questions and other key aspects that kind of allow us to hand the entire thing over to partners to be able to execute on their own. So basically they end up with the slides, they end up with the script, they end up with everything that they need to be able to create an invite. And again, we’re not utilizing the automated technology to run this, but it is something that we’ve been able to hand over to a few partners and they’ve had some early success with that, which is great.

We also, as I mentioned, you know, we’ll take requests, so if we know that a partner’s in a particular space and they’re working on a particular vertical, we can go look at the content that we have that mirrors that and give them some help that they could actually use and run that without having to recreate the wheel.

Louis:    One thing that I hear talked about in marketing is that perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of direct response, kind of digital campaigns. Too much emphasis on what some people call short-termism. Not enough emphasis anymore on brand building. Whether for the vendor or for the partners. When you’re talking with partners, are they primarily direct response lead generation programs or are you talking to them about brand building also?

Lauren: So just to qualify brand building for themselves or for us?

Louis:    For themselves, but also to grow your brand, to grow the awareness of Couchbase as an offering. But not necessarily just the heavy, here’s the offer, click on it, sign up, download.

Lauren: Yeh. You know, it’s interesting because the way that we’re, the way that I’ve really been approaching our partnerships especially more recently, is that there’s such an opportunity to raise awareness for Couchbase through our partnerships. And a lot of the activities that we drive out of partner marketing versus our demandgen team is really around that awareness standpoint. We’re doing more trade shows and participating in meetups that target our development, our joint developers or potential developers, and getting out there with a lot of in-person events where in reality the contacts that you’re making are primarily an awareness play.

We have some partners who actually want to represent us without us even being there in some cases, especially, we see this a little more often in APJ.  And so it’s an opportunity for them to raise awareness of their own brand while leveraging that relationship with Couchbase. So they were kind of hitting two birds with one stone there. So it really depends. I mean we’ve got some partners who are very active on both fronts. They have got a strong relationship with us, they know the Couchbase brand and they feel that there’s enough awareness of us in the market. But I think in those emerging markets, that’s where that awareness play really is critical because you can’t just start generating demand if people don’t know who you are. So we look to our partners to help us do that and it gives them an opportunity to also put themselves forward.

Louis:    On the database side, there’s obviously some huge competitors and so building your brand and awareness so that when they do see a program from Couchbase, they’re more inclined to interact with it.

Do you see a marketing skills gap, this is something I ask you know, every time. Do you see a marketing skills gap between Couchbase and your partners? Often software vendors have great marketing, but many of their partners being in a more technical frame of mind and type of company don’t necessarily. Is that something that you see between Couchbase and its partners?

Lauren: I think it depends on the partner. I think for those partners that are more on the consultancy side or those who are smaller, have been getting a lot of their business through referrals, through other relationships with other technology relationships and other partners that they have, and their primary focus is really not on marketing. I think that’s where those concierge programs come in that I mentioned a little bit earlier that a lot of the PRM vendors are offering where, Hey, we’ll do the marketing for you, let’s package it up and make it super easy so that you don’t have to think about it and you don’t have to build new skills.

But I know in our application, I think maybe six months after we launched the program, I did change and added a question in there that basically asked, Hey, do you have a marketing resource? Do you have someone actually onboard or somebody who can help you on the marketing side, or are you guys on your own? To just try to understand and get a better profile for the partners that we have. How much help do they need, is this an area that they’re really focused on or not? And we can offer things to our partners based on how they grow their business, how they drive demand today.

But yeah, I think other ISPs tend to have a bigger marketing team and more of a focus on those kinds of demandgen activities and go to market activities. Whereas our technology consultants a little less so. So yeah, I think it varies and I think it also depends on the contacts that you are primarily working with. I think as we start building relationships with newer partners, marketing’s usually not the first thing that we’re going in there talking about. We come in and talk to them about the technology and the opportunities there and get around the marketing as we build the relationship.

Louis:    When you have that question about Do you have any marketing consultants or a person or an agency or consultant who’s doing your marketing for you? Is that a nice to know so that you know where they’re at as you start to work with the partner, or is that a gating question where you might say, Oh, we don’t want to work with someone who has no marketing going on?

Lauren: Yeh, it’s definitely not a gating question. I think it’s just a nice to know from my perspective, it’s purely for me and my team so that we have an understanding of where they’re coming in from. Is it more likely that they’re going to need more support from the local field teams from some kind of a local agency, so should we be thinking about it in those terms. Or do we know that they’ve got someone right away that we can start meeting with and start talking about opportunities to go to market together. So it just gives me kind of an idea of how quickly that part of the relationship will ramp up once they’re onboard.

Louis:    All right, that makes a lot of sense. So if you’re making this transition at Couchbase where you didn’t have much of a partner program before and now it’s going to become a bigger and bigger part of your revenue, the traditional issue is channel conflict. And so how do you deal with that to avoid having channel conflict with your direct sales force that has been doing most of the pushing up until now?

Lauren: You know, we’ve got a fantastic sales team and some of them have more experience working with partners than others. So something we’ve actually been working on is continuing to educate our own teams internally of the benefit of partnering for us, not only for us but for our customers as well. And I think everyone’s kind of come to terms and understanding that in a lot of cases we wouldn’t know of those opportunities if it weren’t for the partners. They were very transparent from the beginning. Our sales teams are getting better and better about talking to our customers, about who’s already in their accounts, who’s already working with them. And everyone’s realizing that the sooner that we partner up, the sooner that we identified those synergies, the better result that we can give to our joint customers. So far we’ve been doing pretty well on that front, which I’m really grateful for. Because I’ve certainly been in organizations before where that’s a much bigger problem.

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

Lauren: Yeh. So you know, is it okay to say that sometimes things that keep me up at night are good things?

Louis:    Yeh, actually I had someone a few weeks ago I was talking to who said that the huge opportunity and kind of the excitement around that is what keeps him up at night.

Lauren: Yeh. And I think it’s somewhat similar. You know, we’ve got some great partners. We’ve got some really exciting things happening with some of our key partners like Red Hat and Infosys. We just had a partner conference in Prague with Red Hat. And coming up in Europe again there’s a ton of these opportunities around the Red Hat forums, which we participated in very successfully last year and plan to do again. Infosys we’re about to run our first global hackathon with them that’s focused on their enterprise architects and app developers that’s happening in Bangalore. So there’s a lot of really great things that, you know, result in happy anxiety. To make sure that we’re all over it and we’re executing everything the best that we possibly can, and looking for more of those kinds of opportunities. It’s a good reason to be awake in the middle of the night, but it’s pretty exciting.

Louis:    It’s a good problem to have?

Lauren: It’s a good problem to have. Yeah, absolutely.

Louis:    Well, things are changing at Red Hat…

Lauren: Yeh, yeh, they are. But they’ve been really good about communicating that they’re still running independently, that their partnerships are really critical for them and they continue to value those highly, which is great.

Louis:    So the business world, the partner, the channel world is changing very rapidly as we were talking about before. How do you personally keep up? Are there any particular podcasts or blogs, websites, publications, events that you think are especially valuable or that you really pay attention to?

Lauren: Yeh, you know, I’ve been tied in with CRN throughout, just knowing how much they’ve always focused on partners in general and on what’s happening in the channel. I know you had Jay McBain on before; we were talking again about the shadow channels a bit. And so we’ve talked to him actually a few times, actually prior to launching the program, and then again when we were getting into our second year. Also some other industry analysts who focus on channel that’s always been a really helpful resource for us. I went to Baptie conferences last year and the Women of the Channel Conference with CRN.

You know I also find that some of the PRM vendors, interestingly enough like Mindmatrix and Impartner have some really good webinars and other resources that I find are particularly helpful for when you’re thinking about the marketing side of things and the programmatic aspects. I think they really try to make sure that they’re staying on top of the shifts that they see and making sure that they’re clients and potential clients have the benefit of that research. So those are some of the things that I look at.

Louis:    Okay. So how can people contact you?

Lauren: I’m available on LinkedIn. Very happy to have anybody reach out to me there. When partners want to reach out to us, they can always reach us at partners at couchbase.com which is super easy. And we’re actually going to be around at a lot of events coming up soon too. So they can find Couchbase at places like Oracle Openworld, AWS Reinvent, and of course the Red Hat forums that I mentioned. Or just visit us on the website at couchbase.com.

Louis:    I’ll put those into the show notes at revenueassociates.biz so people can find those.

Lauren: For sure.

Louis:    So thank you for joining us today Lauren. I’ll be sending you a copy of my Bullseye Marketing book, as I do all guests in appreciation.

Lauren: Thank you very much. I look forward to digging into that. I’m sure there’s a lot of fantastic information. So it’s been a great pleasure speaking with you, Louis.

Louis:    So if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or another app, and you found the podcast interesting and useful, please leave a review that will help other people learn about it too. Thank you for listening to the Software Channel Partner Podcast, and please subscribe and listen to future episodes.