Bold Journeys Podcast

Channel pro Greg Eckstein, Founder and CEO of Channel Sales World, shares best practices he's developed through 17 years of training thousands of channel sales professionals. Learn what works, what doesn't, and where to find free training resources.

Vince Crisler is the founder and CEO of Dark Cubed, a cyber security SaaS company. Chris shares how he successful navigated two major transformations; converting his product from an on-premise appliance to Software-as-a-Service and moving sales from an all-direct model to virtually 100% channel via MSPs. You'll learn about the top security threats organizations face today, how he "swallowed the Sa...

Technology service providers have a huge opportunity to shift from fixed time and materials service contracts to selling services-as-a-service. In this episode, Peter Wolf, founder of Azamba Consulting Group, shares the challenges and benefits of transforming his CRM services business to the subscription as-a-service model.

Explore the journey of channel marketing and the massive changes in demand generation with Channel Maven Heather Margolis. Learn 5 important marketing tips to drive more demand with partners. And hear the trends that led Heather to build a new channel marketing automation solution called Spark Your Channel.

Rob chats with Dave Sobel, founder of MSP Radio, on channel challenges and opportunities coming from five disruptive trends in 2020 that no one else is talking about. Dave is also the host of the Business of Tech podcast and co-host of the Killing IT podcast.

Learn how to optimize any technology-as-a-service channel in this engaging conversation with Anne McClelland, the VP of Research of a new TSIA practice, XaaS Channel Optimization. Anne talks about how she's building this new channel practice and the wide range of channel questions she will help XaaS vendors answer.

Seeing what's coming in the channel in 2020 and beyond doesn't require a crystal ball when you have Forrester's Principal Channel Analyst Jay McBain in the room. Jay and I talk about the top 10 things he sees coming based on conversations with hundreds of companies, loads of data, and rigorous research.

Channel Journeys host Rob Spee shares the top 5 things technology vendors, especially XaaS companies, must do to have channel success in 2020. Learn what's in and what's out for partner programs.

In this episode, the last one of 2019, I have the pleasure of interviewing 8x8's head of global channels, John DeLozier. In just a year and a half, John and team have gone from 100% direct to over 60% of the business going through the channel. John shares how 8x8 is making the shift with the help of a mind-blowing partner program they call Elev8.

Tiffani Bova is the growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce and author of the bestselling book Growth IQ. Tiffani shares 5 paths to channel growth applying the strategies from Growth IQ. Learn why the path to growth is never about doing just one thing, and why the sequence of applying the growth strategies really matters.

The "SaaSier" your business, the more likely you need non-traditional channels. And the non-traditional channel everyone is talking about is the "shadow channel".  This week I'm talking with Dave Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer at Impartner. We discuss how to reach and motivate this emerging influencer channel through referral-based programs.

Janet Schijns is the CEO of the JS Group and winner of the Channel Partners 2019 Channel Influencer of the Year award.  We talk about social influence and why it's hugely important for your personal and professional brand. Learn the three steps she took to build her influence and win the Channel Partners award leveraging her social media super powers.

Angus Robertson, Axcient's Chief Revenue Officer and Vice-Chair of the CompTIA Business Applications Advisory Council, tells how they consolidated multiple channel strategies into a winning strategy of going 100% through MSPs.  And Angus shares the key performance indicators he uses to measure their SaaS channel success.

Online shopping has changed the way we shop. Today's technology buyer acts a lot more like a consumer. Jason Bystrak, VP of the Cloud Business Unit at D&H Distributing and member of CompTIA's Channel Advisory Board, shares the work he and the Advisory Board completed on the technology buyer's journey and the role of the channel (partners, distributors, and vendors) in that new journey.

This podcast is a double-header with Tricia Atchison, WW Director Channel Marketing and Enablment at Citrix, and David Pereira, Founder of GetLift, a full service B2B marketing agency. Tricia and David discuss how Citrix built an award-winning integrated marketing program that is enabling partners and improving their channel marketing effectiveness. Listen and learn Tricia's 5 Steps to increasing...

This week I speak with a channel pro who knows a thing or two about MSPs (Managed Service Providers). Rob Rae is the VP of Business Development at Datto, a cloud backup and disaster recovery vendor who has gone all in on MSPs. We discuss the story of Datto and their 100% MSP channel success. Rob shares his secrets to finding, engaging, and inspiring MSPs.

Daniel Burrus is a technology futurist and best-selling author of The Anticipatory Organization. We discuss how to predict the future by looking at different types of trends. Learn how you can create an anticipatory channel organization that will make you the distruptor instead of the disrupted.

I feel very fortunate to have such great channel talent on this podcast. It's hard to keep up with all of the invaluable tips provided by my guests, who collectively represent centuries of channel experience.  In this episode, I highlight my top 10 channel tips from the first 10 episodes. This is a subset of the tips published in my article: https://www.softwareexecutivemag.com/doc/channel-best-pr...

This week I speak with Hope Galley, Sales Director of Software and Services in Cisco's America's Partner Organization. Cisco places a huge importance on customer success and is transforming their channel to play a front-seat role. Hope shares the important role partners play and how Cisco is enabling them to drive customer success through an innovative partner program.

This week I talk with Sandra Glaser Cheek, Global VP of Channel Sales at Ciena about why it's time to modernize your partner program. We discuss how the channel is evolving, how a vendor can stay relevant through this change, and how Ciena modernized and personalized their partner program to motivate an ecosystem of partners of many different shapes and sizes.

My guest is Neeraj Satija, CEO of Concordus Applications and Co-Chairman of the CompTia Blockchain Advisory Council. Neeraj is launching a new company called Maxcentive with a blockchain application to solve a very real channel problem. We discuss why blockchain can do a lot more than just drive cryptocurrency and the potential it has for disrupting the channel.

Jeff Ponts, founder of master agency Datatel Solutions, shares how to navigate the evolving MSP Channel to stay relevant and drive business growth for both partners and vendors. Jeff made a bold move when he founded Datatel 16 years ago. He went all in on Managed Service Providers when all the other Master Agents were focused on using telecom agents.

This week's guest is Peter Thomas, channel marketing expert, founder of Averetek and co-author of Marketing Multiplied. Peter shares 5 practical steps that you can take to maximize the return on your channel marketing investments. Learn how to driver higher partner engagement with your channel program and channel marketing efforts.

B2B partner ecosystems are very different than they were just 10 years ago. The channel is expanding to the point that potentially anyone, including your customers, could be a channel partner. This week's guest is Bryn Jones, founder and CEO of the channel tech company Partnerstack. We discuss how Partnerstack was created to recruit, connect and manage this modern partner ecosystem. Learn about ch...

Avanish Sahai is an expert in building application platforms and ecosystems of development partners. He's now applying his platform magic at ServiceNow where they just topped 500 applications on the ServiceNow store only four years after launching. Avanish dispels five common platform myths as we talk about platform trends, developer partner ecosystems, and how to build a successful developer chan...