Welcome to ChannelWaves, the podcast where channel
leaders share success strategies, best practices and emerging
trends brought to you by StructuredWeb.
Here's your host, Steven Kellam.
Welcome everyone to ChannelWaves.
StructuredWeb's view into everything channel.
I'm your host Steven Kellam and today
joined by Meaghan Moore, who's the VP
of Channel Partnerships at ServiceNow. Welcome, Meaghan.
Thank you. Hi, Steven. How are doing?
I'm doing very well. And you?
I'm so good. So good.
You look like you have just
been somewhere and just come back.
I feel like I've been somewhere and just come back.
But isn't that how we all are?
We're all going and coming and life is crazy. It's good.
It is.
So we're going to talk today about 2024
and what people have been thinking about from
channel partners and where they're going to go
and what their expectations and what they're going
to want, what's going to be delivered.
And the interesting thing is Meaghan and I are doing
this and it's already February and we're already into it.
Right.
So one of the reasons I wanted to have Meaghan
on was because I wanted to see what she thought
about some of the predictions that have been out there,
some of the expectations from partners and partnerships that are
out there and what's really going to happen because she's
right in the middle of it.
I know she just got back from her
partner kickoff and a lot's been going on.
But we're in February already, Meaghan, so the
prediction, prediction stuff is like, hey, it's out
there, but really, what's the real world saying?
And by the way, we're going to get into AI,
but we're going to save AI for the last piece.
I think we're going to start with something you
and I had talked about last year and about
storytelling and curious of your opinion because at StructuredWeb,
I think our goal is to help vendors
help their partners be better storytellers. Right.
And how do we help in channel marketing?
And it's really what we do.
And I know that's been a big part of what your
mantra and what you've talked about for a long time.
So maybe we can talk a little
bit about partners expectations for 2024.
What you think, how storytelling plays
into that partner experience, automation.
We can go through the whole list.
But just curious what you're thinking.
Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right.
The storytelling is certainly, it's been
the buzzword for years now.
I think it's definitely the most effective way
of communicating anything when a partner goes out
and talks about their journey or customer engagement.
And really it's about engagement, right.
Having those intimacy moments or having those points
of engagement where your audience really gets kind
of caught up in what you're talking about
and really wants to listen.
And you and I have talked for years, Steven, about what's
most effective and what's the best way to do this.
And so many people are still kind of
online or doing podcasts like these or webcasts.
So how do you really capture an audience?
And it seems like storytelling is the way where
you get a little bit vulnerable, you get a
little bit of an engagement point, and then people
tend to want to listen more. Absolutely.
How do we help them be better storytellers? Right.
In your mind as you're going through this, and
it's part of what you do in your role,
right, is how do we get them there?
I hear certain things about how do we enable them to
do this, or how do we use automation to do that?
Is there a secret sauce?
Is there a recipe?
Are there things that you tried and true
that are working for you that you think
are going to work well in 2024?
Yeah, I think it's really getting partners to think,
or everybody for that matter, to go external in.
So many of us will be talking about, well, what
are our partners doing or what's happening in the industry?
You got to start at the customer
and come backwards from there, right?
And there is a certain recipe for
how to tell a good story, right.
And it has to start with what was
that emotional moment in time or something that
happened to kind of trigger all this?
And that's all going to start with a customer and
a customer problem or something they experienced or say they
had this catastrophic downtime or something that kind of made
them think about, God, I need a new solution.
And I think if you start there and bring it backwards from
there, I think that's really the best way to do it.
But it's also, again, about a little bit
of vulnerability, a little bit intimacy, and really
getting that engagement where people want to listen
to what you have to say.
How do you break it up? Right.
I continually have these conversations about,
here's the long tail, here's the
mid market, here's the enterprise.
And in the world that I live in,
traditionally in marketing, automation is what we do.
Instructor, web, a lot on the long tail, a little
bit on the prescriptive side on the mid market.
And the larger partners in enterprise really weren't
using platforms like ours because really customize it.
Right.
They didn't want to sound like anybody else.
That's all changing.
We're going to talk about that when we get to AI.
But what do you see across that group of partners?
How are you tiering that?
How are you talking to them differently?
Is that even relevant anymore? Right. Yes.
For me in this new job here
at ServiceNow, it's never been more relevant. Right.
And what you're talking about is the classic
one to one, very customized, intimate marketing.
It's a one to few for those partners that
need some help but have the resources and can
do some of it on their own.
And then it's the one to many.
It's that self serve automation scale model that you
can go capture like a large group of customers.
So that is what our whole strategy is about this
year, is how do you nail those three categories?
Because you handle them all differently,
one to one, very expensive.
When you go down to the scale, one to
many, you can do kind of self serve automation.
That's where obviously StructuredWeb and ServiceNow
are doing a ton of work.
But how do you go out and capture
a larger market and help those partners?
So that's the only thing I think
about these days are those three categories.
And is the partner experience obviously a big part of
this in what you offer across all of those? Right? Yes.
Here's my question.
Everyone I'm hearing is, okay, we're doing more
with less, so maybe a little bit less
or break even on the resources.
But expectations are high not only for
creating great partner experience, but in reality
shortening time to revenue for the partners.
So here we are.
Is okay, we have this resources, we have
this expectation, and we still have this goal
of shortening revenue and making all partners happy.
That's a hard thing to do.
You're not going to let me talk
about AI yet because you're okay.
Here we go, by the way.
Okay, that was a softball toss in the AI thing.
You make a great point. Right?
Like so many companies just in the current economic
conditions we're in, have to do more with less.
There's either layoffs or hiring is slowing, right.
Budgets are coming down, yet the expectations have never been
higher to do more and more and more and capture
more and do more and all that kind of stuff.
And so the only way to
do that, quite frankly, is technology. Right?
It's automation, like you talked about, mixed with a little
bit of AI sprinkle, which we'll talk about later.
But how do you bring resources to partners?
In a couple of ways, one, to make it easy
as possible for them so that they can go quicker
with customers for time to revenue like you talked about.
But two, make it so seamless and simple
for them that it's just this great experience.
At the end of the day, they
are an extension of our salesforce. Right.
So we need to make sure
ultimately it's the customer experience, right.
Customer experience is going to be
largely dependent on their partner experience.
Partner experience is dependent on what I put out
in the market to make it easier for them.
So for us, it's that whole chain
that goes all the way through.
So maybe we should talk about AI.
I don't know how you do without AI.
There's two things that I talk about
almost on a daily basis around this
and obviously curious your take on that.
One is the do more with less.
And I think the AI plays really well into
it and we're going to differentiate and talk about
AI between what I call the big AI and
the direct line to channel marketing and creating content.
But I see two sides of it.
So I spend a little bit, I actually spent
a lot of time talking about do more with
less, but I very rapidly all the conversations get
switched over to doing better with less, not more.
But let's actually do better.
Let's not just take less and try to figure out
to do what we did before, but I think we
can accelerate that and do a whole lot better.
So anyways, that's what I'm hearing, seeing.
I think you're totally right.
And it's so fascinating because AI in
general and especially gen AI, right, it
is a once in a generation change.
This is a really big one, right?
And I think it's super interesting.
AI has been around for a while and then I remember you
gave me a call, I don't even know how long ago.
It was like nine months ago.
And you're like, oh my God, I've got this
product I want to demo for you and it's
Gen AI and it's channel marketing AI.
And I was sitting in the same seat when
you demoed to me and I'm like, oh my
God, I want to get my hands on that.
I want to be first to implement it.
I want to be first to market with you
to do that because it's a game changer.
What StructuredWeb is doing.
And I cannot wait until we get
to release this product out into market
because it's going to change everything.
Well, what StructuredWeb is doing with you to
help the partners to get to the buyer, following
that whole line that you're talking about.
You and I were sitting over a scotch and it
was probably a very good scotch, probably five years ago
at a Channel focus Baptiste event talking about AI.
And I think Ross Brown was sitting there and
we were talking about where would AI go?
And Ross is at 10,000ft and I'm like,
oh my gosh, this is George Orwellian.
He's like, it's coming, it's coming,
it's all this sort of stuff.
And this is five years ago
and we were talking about it.
And even two years ago, you and I were talking
about it going, okay, this is pretty cool where it's
going, but nine months ago we had that conversation when
I actually saw something that, like I said, was a
direct line to channel marketing to help you help your
partners be better storytellers to get to the buyer.
That was a pretty cool moment.
It was a cool moment.
And for those people listening are like, what
in the world are they talking about? Right?
Because we are going to be first.
I'm very excited about it.
So let's talk about what it really means for partners.
So what StructuredWeb is doing is you're going
into the ServiceNow IP, into our websites and internal
place and training all the LLM models on our
language and exactly how we talk and how we
position what that product is.
You're then taking that, putting it in the structured know portal
that we use with you for all of our content.
And imagine now you're a partner.
You can come into this website and you
can say, I'm a partner in Korea.
I want to go after itsm for
this market and this type of person.
And literally within seconds all of this gen AI
is going to create customized content in Korean for
that product, for that customer base, for that Persona.
Just like that.
I mean like amazing.
And by the way, for partners, it's all free, right?
I mean, imagine a world in which you're
a partner where even localization and translation used
to take nine weeks post production of when
they would do it in the United States.
So it is an absolute game
changer, especially for our global partners.
I mean, for everyone for sure.
But when you reach into the kind of localization and
translations, that was the one for me nine months ago,
because you know me, I'm very global, very international.
That was the one where I was like, oh my God.
And when you demoed it for me, you did it in Japanese.
I remember I told Daniel and I'm like, this is amazing.
I mean the double bite character right out of the gate.
I know I'm doing a big promo for you right
now, but I'm literally blown away by the capabilities.
And when I was just at partner kickoff last week in
Vegas, where I met with a lot of partners, tons of
them were global partners, and we talked about the capabilities that
are coming very soon and their eyes lit up.
Where can I sign up?
How do I get access to this? I am all in.
I mean, the response has been absolutely amazing.
Just astounding.
So I am so excited for 2024
and really changing the game here. How about your team?
How does your team feel about this? Right. I'm sorry.
It's such a loaded question. Sorry. I know I.
Yeah, no, all good.
I think the team was, I'd say, skeptical at first.
And you and I have talked about, it's
just this big scary, like, what is this?
And to your point, there is big AI and
then there's channel marketing AI, which are very, I
mean, they've got similar threads, but different. Right.
At first it was like, oh, yeah.
Well, I don't get know, I don't understand how that's going
to happen, but when you can see the demo and touch
and feel it and see how fast it is, it's like,
how do you not just become a total believer, right?
It's like Santa Claus just came town. I'm so excited.
Can't even stand it.
So maybe since you're doing the whole thing,
what's the difference between why channel GPT versus
just unleashing Chat GPT on the partners?
Right, but that's exactly what I talked about.
But like, just Chat GPT, it's
kind of in that open domain. Right.
And it's a wonderful thing.
I use Chat GPT every day.
It does my menu planning for what I'm
going to make for dinner every week.
But that's more of kind of an open.
What's out in the public domain,
all that kind of stuff.
The channel GPT and what we're doing.
What I said, you guys are training the LLM models
on our specific IP and the ServiceNow language and
our positioning so that you don't get the hallucinations.
It's nearly 100% accurate.
Not 100%, nothing's 100%, but the work that it takes
us to go back and check through it and make
sure it's good just takes like no time at all. Right.
So it's very different because it's very customized.
Right.
And there is a cost to that.
I shouldn't say that's free. It's free.
To our partners, there's a cost to it for us.
For me, that is priceless.
It's like we're going to change the landscape and
the ease of use and the experience partners have
and how fast they can get to market.
That is priceless because we're going after big money and
big deals and we want to be first in market.
And ServiceNow is a very.
We call ourselves the rocket ship.
I wouldn't say aggressive is the wrong word, but
we are absolutely in it to win it.
And we're putting everything at the wall right
now and we are going to win it.
So what would you tell our
audience, our listeners, about generative AI?
What do they need to do?
I think you spoke very eloquently on why they
get involved, but what do they need to do?
Maybe share a little bit of the process that you
went through, if you can, on figuring out how to
take that in and figure out how to make.
I think the main thing is we can read 100 articles
and you can go to 100 podcasts and it's great.
You're going to get educated, but you have
to get your hands dirty in it.
So I don't know if you're going to be
showing the video of this podcast today, but my
background, I literally went in and created a gen
AI background that is now my Zoom background, right?
And I said, give me a beautiful high end luxury
office in San Francisco with a bookshelf on the left,
the Golden Gate bridge in the back, a sunny day.
And here is what I got out of it, right?
I had no idea what I was doing, right?
But getting in the sandbox and playing with the
tools and just seeing what they can do.
Because once you touch it and feel it and
experience like, oh my God, that's absolutely insane, right?
Even for our employee kickoff next week.
As a great example, because our company is
all about Genai, you can now go into
the ServiceNow corporate site, internal site, and we'll
do Genai headshots just for fun, right?
Get every employee playing with it, find out
all the tools, doesn't matter what it is,
just go in and play with it.
Because all of a sudden your eyes get open.
Then you start brainstorming with other people, you
realize what the capabilities are and then you
can jump on that train a lot quicker.
And a lot of people say, is Gen AI
going to replace all these jobs, especially marketing, right?
It's a content generator.
No, absolutely not.
It's not going to replace place people's jobs.
It's going to replace those people's jobs that didn't go
out and play with it and understand it and how
to use it and integrate into their everyday life, that's
whose jobs are going to be on the line.
So I'm telling my team, get out there and play with it.
Doesn't matter what the tool is, just go play. Yeah.
I love the analogy. I'd heard this.
You heard, Daniel heard this, too.
It's like having an assistant, right?
It's like having a college grad who come in as
a great writer, but doesn't know all your content, doesn't
know all the nuances, doesn't understand all the value propositions,
but it gives you a great place to start. Right.
And so I think that's the time saver.
And then how you go beyond.
I think your partners are going to
be amazed with what they can do. Right.
You look at so many partners, the
large enterprise partners, they probably wouldn't have
come to a TCMA historically because they
can't really customize their message, right?
And co branding and putting their
logo on, it's not enough.
They want to be able to put their message to the buyer.
And now even the largest partner can save
time and really create great custom content.
Everyone needs to differentiate, right?
The only way to do that is get very specific
and talk about what is your true unique value add
over the competitors that are knocking at the same door.
And, you know, it's funny, I
think about, we talk about predictions.
You and I are going to have a podcast
two years from now and we're going to be
laughing at this one saying, oh, my.
Like everyone does that now.
That was just table stakes now, right?
I think it's going to accelerate incredibly fast.
Who knows what it's going to be, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Anyways, Meaghan.
Oh, one last thing. I was going to ask.
Normally say, hey, any recommendations for
anybody out there for 2024?
I'm pretty sure you just spent the last eight
minutes talking about what they should be doing, what
they should be looking at for 2024.
Any thoughts you want to add to
that or stick with where you want?
Yeah, again, I think, and we talk about
it amongst my team all the time.
Just get out there, talk to your peers,
go look at what's out there, play in
the sandboxes, get some think tanks locally.
And if you know someone, even if
it's a competing vendor, here's the thing.
Channel marketing is not brain science. Right?
We all experience the same problems and we're
all dealing with the same thing and trying
to figure out how to get better.
The most valuable thing that I've done in my
career in partner marketing is to have friends like
you and sit around in rooms with our peers
and my peers at any large vendor.
And we don't talk about best practices and
what are you struggling with and how are
you solving it, what are you doing?
It only makes us better and stronger as an industry.
And at the end of the know,
that's what we're all about, right?
So I say just get out and network. Okay.
All right.
So, Meaghan Moore, thank you so
much for joining us once again.
Absolutely.
And the best way for people to reach you
again would be you can hit me up at
Meaghan moore@servicenow.com or I'm out there on LinkedIn in.
I think I'm still Meaghan Sullivan Moore.
I'm still going through the name transition,
but you can find me either way.
Okay, thanks, Meaghan. Thanks, listeners. Thank you.