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Welcome to ChannelWaves, the podcast

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where channel leaders share success strategies,

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best practices and emerging trends.

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Brought to you by StructuredWeb.

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Here's your host, Steven Kellam.

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Hey, welcome everybody to ChannelWaves.

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Very excited to have Larry Walsh joining us.

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Larry, thanks for taking a little bit

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of time to spend with us today.

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Much appreciated.

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Have a little time for you. Thank you.

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And for those of you who don't know, Larry

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is the CEO and found of Channelnomics and

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an industry veteran for many, many years.

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Yeah, I thought we weren't going to talk about that.

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I know, but you've grown wise.

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You've grown wise over the years, Larry.

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Oh, I don't know if wise is the way I would say it.

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I think that's battle hardened. Okay.

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The whole thing today was I wanted to have

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a stress free, not that stressful doing this, but

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have kind of a fun podcast with Larry.

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And we're going to do word association,

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by the way, after everything we've got

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through talking about, we're doing word association.

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I'm literally going to just throw out words and Larry

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is going to tell us what he thinks and he's

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welcome to do the same thing as well.

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And we're going to see if we can create a few

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wisdoms, few takeaways and have some fun when we do that.

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Are you good with that, by the way?

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I didn't tell Larry this is what we're. I'm fine.

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I'm fine with that.

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I'm game for anything.

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Okay, all right, all right.

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So first word, AI.

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Overused.

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Okay.

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You have to respond with more than like three words.

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This is part of the game. Right.

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Okay, so you actually want me to.

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We have to have a little bit

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of a conversation, stream of consciousness on this. Right?

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A little bit of stream of

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consciousness would help you, honestly. All right. Yeah.

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No, so AI, it's highly

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tortured, overused and hugely transformative.

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Not today.

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I think that AI is, you know, one of the things.

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This is something.

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One of our clients came to us because they went

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all in on AI and they're not an AI company.

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They have AI baked into their applications and

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it's very good and it's very effective.

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So I don't dispute that they are leveraging AI for

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the betterment of their product, but they over rotated on

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it and they got a lot in at first.

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They got the big push of the spike that comes with it.

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And then after a while people like going,

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but you're really not an AI company.

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And I go, yeah, no kidding, you're not.

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And there's a lot of evidence that's building out there

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that AI is a piece of things, not the thing.

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The Wall Street Journal had a piece this morning talking

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about the difficulties companies are having in adopting AI because

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it's not a product per se, it is a, it

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is something that makes other things better.

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Now you can say, look at GPT and

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say yeah, GPT is making writers out of

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non-writers or making emails better, debatable.

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But AI is, I think they over promise too quickly.

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It is going to revolutionize a lot of things.

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It's going to make the world a better place.

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It's just going to take longer

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than people think it's going to.

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And I think that when the analysts are out there

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saying oh it's going to do this over the next

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three years, yeah, could do some of that.

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The real stuff's still down the line.

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And I think that it's like everything else, it's

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a journey that we're going to go on. Okay.

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Purpose built generative AI in

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a channel marketing application.

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Okay, that's more than one word.

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That's a little bit over.

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That is more than one word.

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But you also said math would not be involved.

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Look, and look, I'm on record as saying this

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about the incorporation of AI into marketing automation tools,

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particularly around what StructuredWeb is doing.

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So I'll give you guys a

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heartfelt and sincere plug on this.

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Is that the work that you're doing in

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terms of incorporating generative AI into marketing automation

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or marketing resources is, is really transformative.

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It's one of these things that I remember the first

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time I sat down here with Daniel and this and

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he was walking me through your AI capabilities.

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This is amazing that, that you

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can actually create compelling content and

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images in different languages almost instantly.

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And I actually see this is going to be

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one of the places where AI is going to

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have a real impact on channel marketing both into

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the partners as well as for the partners.

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Partners don't have time to go hunt down the

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latest template or the customizable white paper reports products

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like they don't what you're doing and others like

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you are doing making it a lot simpler for

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them to consume, create and utilize materials in marketing

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that is producing benefits for themselves.

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You know this idea of going hunting and pecking

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through a portal that's going to go away.

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I think that that's the real

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value that comes out of the.

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Out of the AI use case.

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StructuredWeb has developed.

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Irish Whiskey? Writer's Tears every day.

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I mean like me you want, I had to throw, I

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had to throw that one out there because I wasn't sure

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whether your feelings about purpose built generative AI were before we

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shared a glass of whiskey or after we. Oh, no, no.

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I mean, look, I mean, it's hard for me

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to talk about Irish whiskey since I quit drinking.

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Wait, really? Wait?

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Yeah, no, I ran out last night.

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I have to stop at the store on my way home from work.

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Okay.

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Yeah, we're going to switch back and forth.

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Attribution.

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I can't put my finger on it. Okay.

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Which by the way is the problem with attribution

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is that I'd be there for a minute.

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I was like, come on, I'm having

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an attribution conversation twice a day.

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And by the way, I used to have it once

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a week and then it went to once a day.

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Now it's twice a day.

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At an event a couple of weeks ago in Orlando

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where I was facilitating a series of workshops.

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Channel Data Management is one of the biggest

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problems that we face in this industry.

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And a lot of it comes down to attribution is one

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problem because we don't know where the data is coming from.

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We don't know.

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We don't have access to the right data.

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There's no company really does have a

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single source of truth, and that's problematic.

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And when people talk about channels as being overlays

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to an organization, it's an overlay to the sales

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organization or overlay to operations or whatever.

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It really isn't.

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Channels are really under and they are

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fragmented across these different vendor organizations.

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And the ownership of the data often is not the

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channel that owns it, it's somebody else that owns and

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the channel is actually getting access to it.

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It makes it very hard to demonstrate that

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you did something or a partner did something.

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And in fact, one of one organization that we work

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with, we were talking about this and they said it's

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really easy for the sales team to dismiss the value

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of partners because even when you have the data, there

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isn't a partner in the room when they're discussing it.

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So it's like, no, I did that. No, not the partner.

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Yeah, I know what it says here.

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But the partner says that the other problem

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with channel data management is people don't.

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Even if you have good data, people don't believe it.

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And, you know, you can light it up and

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say, this is what we all agree on.

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And they will then go hunting for more because there's

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a huge amount of confirmation bias or recency bias that

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comes goes into channel analytics or at least within these

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teams and they go looking for more.

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And I have to tell people more is not better.

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You know, agreement is better.

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You know, this is what we're going to measure.

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This is how we're going to measure it.

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And we're going to accept whatever

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comes out on the other side.

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And there isn't enough of that conversation

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happening in the beginning of that process.

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Which makes the attribution problem even harder.

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Yeah, we could go down this path. Right.

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I used to run an MDF company and trying to manage

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attribution to that for an ROI inside an MDF company.

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And now in the marketing side, this is

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where I'm hearing, in the marketing side.

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So I know we talked about attribution.

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I threw that as one word marketing.

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Channel marketing attribution is one thing I

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was going to throw out as well.

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Because of that, I'm getting hit on more and more.

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It's not just do we have partners using a platform?

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Do we have the right partners using the

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platform and can we tie platform to outcome?

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I mean, look here, I was way more than one word.

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Sorry, Larry.

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Oh, no, but look, before we move,

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before we move on, MDF is MDF

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And attribution is an issue that comes up all the time.

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I gave a partner a dollar in MDF.

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Six months later I see a sale.

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Did the MDF lead to that sale?

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And the answer to that question is maybe.

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But all kinds of other things happen in between. But.

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And people say, well, which one did it?

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I said, they all did it.

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It's a concert of activities and investments that

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result in the sale, not just one attribute.

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Okay, we could do one just on MDF or

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we should just do one on ROI and yeah

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Because by the way.

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So how different is that from channel marketing?

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Oh, I had someone use your platform to

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run a demand generation campaign and okay.

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And they sold something down the road.

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Now we can tie in a, some sort of

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code to try to track it to deal registration.

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But once again it's, it's attribution at a fairly

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high level because there's a lot of other things.

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But people are really getting hit hard

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by executives right now on that, Larry.

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Or of marketing attribution, whether

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it's through channel or not.

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And it's a real challenge for people.

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Well, look, the trend line has been the same

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for the past two and a half years.

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Channel budgets are under a huge amount of pressure,

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which means there has to be more justification for

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investment and there has to be more of a

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result driven from whatever is happening.

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And so you put those things together Is

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that you're, it's always going to lead to

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more questions on the other side, not, you

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know, celebrations that something worked.

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Here's, here's the challenge, right, Especially in the long

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tail, is partners don't want to give that information

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as they're going through a sales cycle, even if

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they do that back to vendors. Right.

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And we could talk forever about

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the historical reasons for that.

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And it's a real challenge today until there's

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a trust enough that they can do that.

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I am seeing in the one to few the managed partners.

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You know, you got four vendors and

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four partners going to a buyer and

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they're all co selling, co marketing together.

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That's, that's pretty good, but still a real challenge.

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And I'm wondering are we ever going to

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get to the point where, you know, partners

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can actually help with that attribution?

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Would they be giving, willing to give more of

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that data or how do we do that so

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that more of that data flows back and we

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can actually really manage efforts to results.

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Data reporting.

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Data sharing is a thorny issue amongst partners because

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you require, first of all, it requires a huge

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amount of trust between them and the vendor that

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the data is not going to get misused or

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it's not going to get flipped to somebody else.

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One of the problems that happens is, is that the vendors

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will say, look, give us your data, give us your point

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of sales data and we're going to enrich it and give

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it back to you so you have better intelligence.

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Well, that doesn't always work out well in

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terms of yes, the process will happen, but

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does it actually result in something meaningful?

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Not necessarily.

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The other problem though is that the partners

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giving the vendors more data is problematic.

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There's not a data sharing standard, there's

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not one way to do this.

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And I was having a conversation with a

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large reseller in Europe not too long ago.

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We're talking about this because one

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of their vendors had implemented this.

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It was a requirement.

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You had to submit your point of sales data.

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And I think it was on a weekly cycle.

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This is huge.

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This is hundreds of millions of

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dollars in product being booked around. Right.

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He has a team of 20 people working on it.

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Not working on selling, not working on demand,

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not working in market strategy, but working on

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getting the data back to the vendor.

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Yeah, yeah, it's a huge

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resource strain on the partners.

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So you combine the trust issue with the value issue,

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with the, with the cost that goes into it.

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That's a big burden.

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That's a burden of placing the partners now If

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I could wave a magic wand and say, yeah,

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we can go fix this, that would be remarkable.

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But it's, you know, it's, you know, it's not

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one of those things that's going to happen tomorrow.

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Okay, let's wind it down.

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Last one, 2025.

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I, you know, I wish I had an easy answer for that.

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So here's what I will tell you.

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So, Channelnomics, every quarter we publish

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our partner confidence index for Q4.

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And the basic question is tell us what

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you think over the next 12 months. Yep.

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And partner confidence for the next

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12 months is actually ticking up.

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So for much of 24 it's been at 10 year lows.

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For Q4 it actually jumped up and the trend line

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00:14:00,256 --> 00:14:02,615
looks like it's going to continue to go up.

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We'll know more in January when we release Q1 for 25.

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00:14:06,865 --> 00:14:10,577
The outlook is pretty strong, at

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least in North America though.

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North America tech spending is

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expected to continue to climb.

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Globally, tech spending is, I think the

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analyst firms, they're overly optimistic to hyperbolic

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in terms of their projections.

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I mean I've seen double digit growth projections

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from some analyst firms like that's not going

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to happen, but it's going to be strong.

324
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The problem is that it's not going to be uniform.

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It's going to be, it's not

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going to be in every category.

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And I think that that's where we're going to

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continue to see adjustments across the industry is that

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00:14:44,572 --> 00:14:46,899
there's going to be like in anything else, there's

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going to be some winners and some losers.

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There's going to be products that

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commoditize, that don't do as well.

333
00:14:51,124 --> 00:14:52,483
There's going to be new products that will

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come on that will either take off or

335
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they'll struggle to find their place.

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But generally speaking, you know what I've

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been saying for since the beginning of

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'23, '23 was going to be terrible.

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It was first half of '24 was going to be hard. It was.

340
00:15:10,946 --> 00:15:13,449
The second half is showing signs

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00:15:13,450 --> 00:15:14,785
of life, better signs of life.

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Things are feeling a lot better.

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And we're seeing that not just in the, not just

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in the channel, but also in the macroeconomic trends.

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00:15:20,986 --> 00:15:23,465
And the expectation is that we're going to continue to

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00:15:23,466 --> 00:15:30,405
see good times or better conditions through '25 and '26.

347
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That's my expectation.

348
00:15:32,578 --> 00:15:36,809
Now that's North America and globally, Europe is

349
00:15:36,810 --> 00:15:39,465
a different, Europe is in a different place.

350
00:15:39,466 --> 00:15:40,865
Asia is in a different place.

351
00:15:40,866 --> 00:15:43,045
Latin America is a mixed bag.

352
00:15:43,825 --> 00:15:45,645
I don't even want to talk about Africa.

353
00:15:47,105 --> 00:15:50,485
Europe is in a tough spot. Inflation.

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Inflation.

355
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The that they don't have the same economic base as

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we do and they have more problems than we do.

357
00:16:00,610 --> 00:16:02,765
Okay, the last word. Happiness.

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Getting to do this every day.

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You know, honestly, I tell this.

360
00:16:09,650 --> 00:16:11,925
I met somebody for the first time last week,

361
00:16:13,345 --> 00:16:15,897
a client, you know, one of our clients.

362
00:16:15,898 --> 00:16:18,375
And they wanted me to talk with one of their new

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00:16:18,376 --> 00:16:23,231
executives and I was explaining to her is that what brings

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00:16:23,232 --> 00:16:27,199
me happiness is the people around me, the companies that I

365
00:16:27,200 --> 00:16:30,519
get to work with, my partners like Steven and Daniel at

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00:16:30,520 --> 00:16:33,567
StructuredWeb, our clients at Channelnomics.

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00:16:33,568 --> 00:16:35,751
I mean there's a lot of goodness but every day I

368
00:16:35,752 --> 00:16:41,415
wake up feeling fortunate that I get to do this.

369
00:16:41,416 --> 00:16:43,311
But that brings me a lot of happiness.

370
00:16:43,312 --> 00:16:44,655
We're pretty blessed.

371
00:16:44,656 --> 00:16:46,155
Yeah, we absolutely are.

372
00:16:47,135 --> 00:16:48,623
All right, thank you, Larry.

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Thank you viewers.

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00:16:49,920 --> 00:16:52,423
Listeners, have a happy day.

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00:16:52,424 --> 00:16:53,535
And I sincerely mean that.