Paul Higgins Podcast

Your vendor referral pipeline has quietly slowed over the last six months, and you cannot put your finger on what changed. In this episode, I explain why the deals that would have been a certain size last year are landing at less than half, and why your platform will never be the one to warn you. I have spent 35 years on the partner side of the two biggest franchises in the world, Coca-Cola and th...

Your commission cheque is smaller than it used to be, the leads your platform sends you have slowed to a trickle, and every month there seem to be more partners fighting over the same deals. In this episode, I share a conversation I had with someone deep inside the HubSpot ecosystem about where the partner model is heading, from falling lifetime commissions to Salesforce territories starting to ov...

You built AI into your delivery this year, your team ships faster, and your close rate is still sitting exactly where it was at the start of the year. In this episode, I break down why that happens, and why it is the same shift accountants faced 20 years ago when software started eating their compliance work. The ones who survived stopped selling the pieces and started selling the puzzle, while th...

Your prospects can tell within about 10 minutes of a Zoom call that you don't really know their industry. In this episode, I share the coffee meeting that stopped me from launching a hotel and cafe service line at Coca-Cola that would have made me the laughing stock of the trade, and the one detail 50 trade articles never mentioned. I break down what an industry coach is (not a professional coach,...

Your P&L says you made 60 percent margin last year. The real number could be half of that, and it is not an accounting error, it is the hours you spend on delivery costed at zero. In this episode, I break down a partner agency I evaluated for acquisition that looked healthy on paper, until we moved the founder's delivery hours out of drawings and into the cost of delivery and watched the net p...

Your certification feels like the asset. It is closer to a rented seat on someone else's platform, and AI is quietly pulling the chair out from under it. In this episode, I break down a conversation with a peer of mine, an ex-client who built a Zoho consultancy from scratch, kept a strong team, and retains clients better than almost anyone I know, and still cannot sell the thing he built. So he is...

You are one of forty partners on your platform, and every website, every LinkedIn profile, and every pitch says the same three lines: Salesforce implementation, Zoho work, Monday builds, HubSpot onboarding. In this episode, I break down the WHO decision that separates the partner who owns a vertical from the forty who blend into the directory. I share how one Monday partner became the only name li...

You can beat the biggest partner in your ecosystem on content, on volume, on quality, and still finish the year at a quarter of their revenue with price as the only lever anyone hands you. In this episode I break down why that happens and what to do about it, starting with the rule Jack Welch laid down in a 1981 speech that almost nobody quotes correctly. Your platform, whether it is Salesforce, Z...

Firing your agency won't get you more leads. I got on a call this week with an MSP owner in a market with over 2,500 providers, all deals mostly on price, who had burned two years and thousands of dollars on two different agencies with next to nothing to show for it. In this episode I break down why the problem was never the agency: it was that he had never picked who he serves, so every piece of...

Why you should listen Sarah McDevitt, a HubSpot leader and first-time author, breaks relational intelligence into five practical signals (Awareness, Presence, Empathetic Structuring, Connection Capital, and Human Differentiation) you can use to become the partner a client cannot swap out for a tool. Learn how to be a "context miner" in every meeting: the way sharp partners use full presence to ext...

You subscribe to the newsletters, listen to the podcasts, watch the videos, sit in the partner events, and every quarter your revenue still falls behind the target you set for yourself. The smartest SaaS partners I know are usually the most stuck, and it is not because they are missing information, it is because they have too much of it. In this episode I tell the truth about my own trap: after I...

Look at your last ten projects and ask an uncomfortable question: how many could the platform's own AI agent do most of within the next two years? For a lot of SaaS partners, the honest answer is most of them, and that is exactly the implementation, configuration, and migration work paying the bills right now. In this episode, I break down why AI is not going to replace you, it is going to expose...

Every podcast in our space is telling you AI has killed SaaS, and not one of them can name a client who has actually walked away from their platform. In this episode, I show you why the "AI replaces the platform" story does not hold up right now, and where your attention actually belongs instead. Here is the test I run before I believe any of it: not what a guest or a host predicts, but what a cli...

The decision that scares you most is the one keeping you stuck, and the fear talking you out of it has a name: eggs in one basket. In this episode, I break down why that fear is a lie for SaaS partners spread thin across five verticals, and the two tests that kill it in under a week. I share how one client I work with crossed $100,000 a month for the first time with zero dollars spent on marketing...

You are about to spend months solving a problem you have never actually counted, and the real cost is not the wasted build, it is every move you do not make while you are stuck in it. In this episode, I break down three Slack conversations I had with SaaS partners in two weeks, each one convinced the complex solution was the answer: a platform migration, a staged AI email sequence, a full LinkedIn...

Why you should listen Jim Marascio runs Equals 11 with roughly 30 direct team members, yet delivers Salesforce work with on-demand access to more than 600 certified engineers. He breaks down the exact staffing partnerships in LATAM and Europe that let a lean business play far larger than its headcount. Learn how to move up the value chain from tactical delivery to consultative "what if" conversati...

You did not get into this business to sell configuration hours, but at some point that became the model anyway. In this episode, I break down the one number from Forrester's Microsoft modern work partner study that every SaaS partner should sit with: 60 percent of last year's partner revenue growth came from AI, and the fastest growing slice was not deployment, it was advisory, up 63 percent in a...

Still treating your closed lost pipeline as a graveyard, chasing new leads while old quotes gather dust in your CRM? In this episode, I break down two AI revenue plays most SaaS and platform partners are missing completely: winning back business you already quoted and lost, and turning your best internal systems into a new revenue stream. I share how a Zoho partner turned a hundred and fifty thous...

If your business is fully booked and still can't grow, the problem is not capacity and it is not systems. It is that everything still runs through you. In this episode, I share the question I ask every SaaS partner I work with: what would have to be true for you not to be needed in delivery tomorrow? Not next year, tomorrow. I walk through how a Zoho partner who was doing delivery on nearly every...

Why you should listen Chris Widmayer took Penrod from a generalist Salesforce shop to one of the top five healthcare partners at Salesforce, and lifted gross margins by about 15% (now sitting between 47% and 55%) by committing to a single vertical. Learn how he built productized packages and SaaS products on top of his services so the business earns at high margin without him in every delivery, no...

The hardest thing you do, you price at zero. The configuration anyone with a certification can deliver gets quoted down to the hour, then the integration thinking the platform was never built for, the architecture, the judgment, you throw in for free because it doesn't fit on a line item. In this episode, I break down the WHAT decision keeping most SaaS partners billing commodity hours while the p...

You finished the week proud of the automation, the agent, the tool you finally shipped. Then the quieter thought lands: not one conversation with anyone who could actually buy from you. In this episode I name the trap that catches most SaaS partners who came from corporate or delivery, where building feels like measurable progress and selling feels like exposure. I break down why one more tool nev...

You keep telling everyone the business is fine, and your pipeline, your LinkedIn profile, and your bank balance at the end of the month keep telling the truth. In this episode I go back to the years I spent saying "great" to anyone who asked, while my body was in kidney failure and everyone around me could see what I refused to. I see SaaS partners doing the exact same thing, using AI to make thei...

Why you should listen Gideon Shalwick built Vubli after nearly 20 years in online video and software, and he breaks down why your personal brand channel outranks your company channel in both search and AI results every time. Learn how to structure a short-form video so viewers stop scrolling and watch to the end, including why the hook is the one element worth 80% of your effort. Discover how to t...

A buyer in your niche just picked their SaaS partner. It wasn't you, and you never knew the deal was happening. In this episode I break down what Jay McBain, the most quoted channel analyst in the world, told me about the 28 moments that now decide every considered purchase, and why the deal is usually won or lost at moments 10 through 12, long before a salesperson knows it exists. I explain why w...