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Marketing in Progress is a spinoff of Work in Progress that digs into what’s moving the needle in B2B. We feature marketing leaders, sales leaders, and agency owners sharing real stories, smart ideas, and no-filter perspectives—so you walk away with practical guidance to help you do your job better.
Lucy Greenaway (00:00):
Partner marketing gets underfunded because it's really hard to track success. You get it right. It can scale your brand and revenue faster than any single campaign could. And I think that's what people miss.
Gayle Kalvert (00:13):
Hi, I'm Gayle Kalvert, and this is Marketing in Progress, a spinoff of work in progress. This is for anyone juggling the world of B2B marketing, figuring out what matters, what you can skip, and what actually grows revenue. You'll hear from marketing leaders, sales leaders, and agency owners, every angle with no filter. You won't hear any jargon and no fluff. Just real talk, smart ideas, and some laughs along the way. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Marketing in Progress. I'm your host, Gayle Kalvert, and today I'm joined by Lucy Greenaway. Lucy is global partner marketing manager at XM Cyber, and honestly one of the smartest voices I know when it comes to partner marketing. She also happens to be one of the most honest, which is why we're excited to hear from her today. Lucy's been recognized on the Future B2B CMO 100 List, a CRN finalist for Marketer of the Year.
(01:11):
And this episode, we get real about why partner marketing is still underfunded and misunderstood. How tech companies should approach partnerships for success and three effing things that actually work in partner marketing today. We'll also talk about what it's like building a career in tech while being younger than half the people in the room. If you've ever had to do all the things with zero support or had to prove yourself over and over again, this one's for you. Lucy, so excited to have you here, not just because we have really foul mouths and both of us are really honest, but because as you know, partner marketing is near and dear to my heart. It's where I grew up professionally. I've experienced and witnessed that it is the least funded when it comes to marketing. So let's get started with, why does partner marketing not get any respect?
(02:07):
What is the biggest misconception about partner marketing?
Lucy Greenaway (02:11):
That it's just putting a logo on your product overview sheet and sending it out. No, it's not. It's everything from a joint value prop, a joint, like two sales teams working together, two marketing teams working together and putting it out, this whole concept of let's just co-brand something. Let's not. I don't want to see a co-branded data sheet that's just the vendor's message. It's lazy on the vendor's part and that's not giving real value to the partners either. It's not what they want to be promoting out as experts within their field. So let's flip that switch.
Gayle Kalvert (02:47):
Yeah. So can you describe what your job actually entails then? Let's start at the top. So like you said, partner marketing can often be thought of as joint branded, we've got two logos, we're good. What actually is partner marketing for those that may not know?
Lucy Greenaway (03:03):
You need to know everything. And when I say that, you need to understand demand generation, you need to understand content creation, you need to know what field marketing is. You need to know how to code social selling together. You need to know how to run events, you need to run enablement, you need to know how to train, and you need to know how to relationship manage, like all of it. And you have to do all of that without a huge team behind you. So you're the designer, the writer, the strategist, the analyst, all in the same day all at once. And it makes it hard because you then need to be really easy to work with as well because partners want to work with really easy vendors to work with. All their time is being demanded by all the other vendors in the world and some of them may be doing more revenue than you might be kind of holding the market share within whatever sphere of cybersecurity, in my case, that you're looking after.
(03:53):
So you need to be good at everything and you may need to make it simple for them to market with you, otherwise you are just going to get lost in the noise.
Gayle Kalvert (04:00):
One thing I experienced was that partnerships that really were profitable were able to be successful because there was a sponsor inside each organization, not from a marketing standpoint, but from a business standpoint, who was actually gold and measured on the success of the partnership. Has that changed? What are you seeing in how you create a successful partnership?
Lucy Greenaway (04:27):
Yes, it helps. A lot of smaller vendors won't have that luxury. Sometimes I've seen it more in the North American market where you pay to be part of partner programs and you get someone assigned to you and then they might have a different quota relief depending on what partnership level you are. In EMEA, it doesn't really work like that. It is more relationship funded. But if you don't have that executive buy-in, if you don't both have skin in the game, it's never going to work. You need to align two businesses on the same goal. You need to align the sales team, you need to align on the customers that you want to go onto, and you need to have an overlap that creates real demand, like a real niche for that partner, a real partnership with yourselves. It's like business development, relationship management, all wrapped into one.
(05:16):
And I think that nuance is probably where most companies go wrong because you could have the greatest plan in the world that's flawless in your PowerPoint slides. But if you don't have the relationship and the buy-in from that third party effectively, then the execution side isn't going to be there.
Gayle Kalvert (05:32):
Yeah, that's really important. And you mentioned that as a partner marketer, you really have to know about all these different disciplines because you are ultimately doing all of the marketing, but for a partnership. So can you talk about how to become that multifaceted for anyone who's in partner marketing and wants to maybe move ahead in their career or somebody who's trying to understand for their company, I really do want to invest in a partner marketer. Who should I be looking for?
Lucy Greenaway (06:04):
You've got to have a can- do attitude and just throw yourself into it. I didn't know, and I still don't know everything about all disciplines of marketing. I'm not an expert in everything. I call myself a jack of all trades. I can get my way around lots of different things. I'm really good at certain things and other things I need to lean on my team. I'm very fortunate where I am today. We have a great corporate marketing team that I can go to and I can lean on if I need help with product marketing. If I need digital demand gen help and advice around what works, what doesn't, so I can take that advice to my partners, then I can do that. So you don't need to be an expert in everything, but you do need to have conversations around knowing the art of possible in those marketing tactics so that you can put together a campaign player plan with your focus partners that meets the needs of whatever campaign you're trying to run or whatever audience you're trying to reach.
Gayle Kalvert (07:00):
You touched on something that's really important for partner marketers. There are always many partners. So how do you go about creating and managing planning with 50 vendors? Is that even a thing?
Lucy Greenaway (07:14):
I mean, it has to be a thing. You have to get there. You need to work back from the targets of the company that are being set. Your company needs to have an end goal. They need to have revenue goal. They need to know what regions it's coming from. There needs to be a company goal. You then need to take that back and look at your channel team. What's the channel strategy? It's not down to a marketer to work out what that channel strategy is. Your channel team are the experts. They're there to guide you. They're there to know who their focus partners are in the region. Where are we going to look to develop the most business? What partner are we putting the most business through? Where do we want to expand? Maybe there's some new partners that we want to try out that might have some really cool customers that are in the vertical we play really well in.
(07:57):
All of these different factors need to be added together so that you have a plan that you can go after. After that, you might want to go, okay, partner A is going to be our focus partner within the UK. And then I can go, right, partner A, they've specialized in retail. We have X customer references with these guys. Let's focus on a retail campaign telling their niche story. So they might be really good selling stock optimization or something that marries into our product because of X, Y, Z. Let's get their niche and our niche so that we're not just promoting our product on a product data sheet. We're promoting a story that's relevant to their customers, what they've sold to before, and we make it really easy for their sales reps to basically also do an upsell. "Hey, we've got this new product. It automatically already tags onto a story they've already brought." Rather than getting them to go in and picture a new product that makes no sense as to what kind of conversations they've had with their customers previously.
(08:54):
So that's where the marketing person comes in. That's where you need to have that knowledge of all the different tactics of how you're going to get this partner to sell this co-message and this joint value proposition with you, get them invested, whether that is through content creation, digital demand journal, field marketing, event marketing, whatever that may be. But that's where the partner marketing expert comes into. We can't be doing that without the goals being outlined to us before because you can't set budget expectations when you don't know what you need to be getting back in on the closed business front.
Gayle Kalvert (09:29):
What you're talking about isn't just specific to partner marketing, right? Everything that you're preaching is exactly what we preach when it comes to direct marketing as well. Nevermind the features and functions, but what's the use case? What is the story? What is the problem that's being solved? If salespeople are making money from this, they will continue to work with you. What would you say to a CMO who wants better partner results, but they're only funding events, right? We know events, events, events can often be thought of as the channel for partnerships. What would your point of view be there?
Lucy Greenaway (10:07):
Events are great, but they don't replace enablement and content and actual cohesive campaigns. Event could be part of a campaign. This one-off event motion thinking they're going to set the world alight needs to be left in last year or many years ago, ideally. Going to an event and not having a follow-up plan, not having the sales team trained already on the messaging, not having a call-to-action playbook, not having email templates, not having a joint value proposition is just expensive networking. And that's why most people don't see results in it. And then that's why marketing starts to get seen as a cost center because you can't track the results from it. You touched on something important.
Gayle Kalvert (10:52):
Sales enablement, the pieces of partner marketing that aren't necessarily viewed as marketing. What does partner marketing need from their leadership to be successful that isn't seen as traditional marketing? You typically think, well, to be successful, partner marketing needs budget. They need X, Y, and Z. But you talked about sales enablement and time. I've found you need advocates from your leadership to create time for you, the partner marketer in front of sales, making sure partner marketing is as important and viewed as critical to the business.
Lucy Greenaway (11:34):
It needs to stop being seen as a support function. It's a growth engine and it's your quickest way to market and it's like a force multiplier of what you're doing. And it needs to be seen that way. It's not just an extension of your corporate marketing. It's an entire ecosystem of how marketing works. It drives pipeline, it drives influence, it drives relationships, and it drives scalability of your company. If you get it right, it can scale your brand and revenue faster than any single campaign could. And I think that's what people miss. And I think the issue is because it's kind of under sales, it's under channel, it's under marketing, it kind of benefits a lot of people, but no one really fully owns it or fully behind it or has fully got their hand in the air going, "Yes, this is a thing." It doesn't always get the backing that it deserves because it shares everybody's responsibilities.
(12:33):
I think that's why partner marketing gets underfunded because it's really hard to track success. You're making pipeline, you're making sales through somebody else's sales team. It's not tangible results. We'd get MQLs from an event, the partners following it up. How do I track that in my sales force? It's hard. And I think that is a lot of the trouble that us partner marketers have when we're trying to justify budget and we're trying to get more investment because it's not as linear as it is doing corporate marketing. We don't have all the data ourselves. GDPR is a nightmare data protection X, meaning we can't share data in between partners unless it's a deal reg in the portal, but not everything's ready to be a deal rich. So it's hard to track campaign success.
Gayle Kalvert (13:17):
Yeah, no. Okay. So let's do it. Let's get into the three effing things that actually work. So you are chief partner marketer and you're like, "All right, everybody, I'm here to school you. " It doesn't even have to be what you're currently doing per se, right? Just what are you seeing out there that is working in partner marketing?
Lucy Greenaway (13:38):
Okay. Number one, a joint value proposition. Let's not be marketing with a partner where we don't know why we're marketing with them. What value do they bring us? What value do we bring them? Let's talk about it. When both brands are telling one clear story, it's going to convert. It's going to be exciting. Number two, always on enablement. Simple, short content that partners can dip in and out of, get what they need when they need it. Less of this, you will be here at this time to listen to my webinar. Or you will read my 500-page newsletter that you get from all 50 vendors probably on the same day of the month that you're never going to read. Do people read them? I'd love to know. I'd love to know if partners actually read the newsletters and what ones they find valuable. I'm open for it, but I don't read any from ones that I work with.
(14:30):
When I'm working on that project, sorry, with that partner, then I want everything in front of me. But if I'm not in that zone or I'm doing something else, I don't need it. Number three, let's follow up on our activities. The best ideas will fail because no one knows what the hell happened after we did a campaign. We need to have our follow-up nailed before we even commit to the activity. And it's something that I've openly said in different podcasts that I've definitely jumped into activities too quickly and afterwards gone, why haven't you shared the leads with me? Or who are you doing it? Or can I get an update? Or can we jump on a call and find out what your BDR team's done? And you're reactive. We're not being proactive then. Every other vendor's got in there before us. It's just a bad way to make bad ROI on investment.
(15:22):
We have to learn from the bad mistakes, otherwise we don't get better. But yeah, it's definitely something moving forward that is on my non-negotiable marketing planning checklist before we sign anything off moving forward that we know exactly who's following up when, what the SLA is for it and how everything's being updated, check-in calls with the partners will be booked before the activity happens, just to bridge that gap. So the three effing things that actually work.
Gayle Kalvert (15:51):
Joint value prop.
Lucy Greenaway (15:52):
Yep.
Gayle Kalvert (15:54):
On demand sales enablement.
Lucy Greenaway (15:55):
Yes.
Gayle Kalvert (15:56):
And actually following up. Actually following up. As is everything with marketing, I find it sounds pretty logical, right? It's really the basics. Let's do the logical things, everybody.
Lucy Greenaway (16:10):
Yeah. I'm sorry that I'm not here with the game-changing news flashes, but let's get the basics right. This is what I say
Gayle Kalvert (16:17):
All the time. I find, and I think Lucy, I'm sure a lot of people listening are thinking the same thing. We drive ourselves crazy thinking that we are missing the newest, greatest thing. I mean, I do it. Our clients do it. What should we be doing? There's so many things going on out there that we definitely should be doing and that company must be doing the thing. And whenever we have these conversations and you talk to people honestly, you're like, what is working? You know what's working? The tried and true things that have always been working. So do them and do them consistently.
Lucy Greenaway (16:47):
Consistently good is better than doing something that looks great on the outside and it giving you nothing. I'd rather do a chart and tested C-suite dinner where we'd get our follow-ups booked up after it and it's a nice campaign flow than doing some really extravagant activity that looks great on LinkedIn, but it doesn't convert.
Gayle Kalvert (17:10):
Just my message for everybody is just calm the fuck down. We're being so stressed because marketing is changing so quickly. Technology is changing so quickly. So the way we do marketing is changing so quickly. And this is honestly me being like a friend. I'm not yelling at anybody. I'm being honestly, guys, let's just all calm down. It's going to be okay. Do the things that are working, do them consistently, and you'll have better results. Let's talk about your career, career experiences. You and I have had the fortunate experience of being the youngest people in the room.
Lucy Greenaway (17:47):
Yes.
Gayle Kalvert (17:47):
Often the only woman in the room. I am no longer the youngest in the room, you bitch, but you can let us know. You can share with us your experience. How do you deal with that? When people ... I know, I can tell people for you, you're gorgeous, you're smart, you happen to be young, you don't get as much respect and that's bullshit. So what do you do about that?
Lucy Greenaway (18:11):
I don't know how long I can hold onto this young person thing for, but I will keep trying. But yeah, it's true. I keep getting the, "Oh my God, you're young enough to be my child." It's just a sentence that stays with me since I got into the cybersecurity, like the tech industry, because I heard it so much. And you'd kind of sit there and you'd be like, "I'll just be quiet. I'll just take notes and sit on the side." And I think for a long time it kind of made me feel like my voice wasn't valid because I didn't have 25 years experience in the industry. I think I've learnt now just focus on my results. Over time, consistency will build credibility and I don't need to match somebody's years of experience. I just need to deliver value in what I'm doing, listen and align what I'm doing with the goals of the person that I'm working with and don't shrink myself.
(19:06):
I've been hired to do a job. I've gone through the interview process and they think I'm good. So let's go and be good. Let's go and do and execute on the ideas that you had. And I think I've been very fortunate to work for great people. I've had great mentors that believed in me when I had no experience and kind of paved the way for me to do great things. I'm very lucky that I fell into an industry where, albeit it's very male dominated, it is changing. It's very supportive of women now. You mentioned earlier that CRN's women and diversity, we have great opportunities like that to showcase what women are doing. And so I'm very grateful for that, but it doesn't mean that I haven't been a struggle to get to where you are and you do sometimes feel like you have to fight a little bit harder to be heard, but I'm very fortunate to have got to where I've gone to.
Gayle Kalvert (19:58):
What comes to mind for me is when somebody says, "Oh my gosh, you could be my daughter." Say, "Thank you. " If you just say, "Thank you. " Or the other thing you mentioned, which I think is critical, it is definitely why I was able to get into rooms where I was much younger was the mentors I had. I was very fortunate first job out of college to have incredible mentors, not just one, who didn't care how old I was, they were looking at work ethic. Work ethic is more important than the number of years experience, and that's either way. You can have 25 years of experience, you could have two years of experience. In my mind, what I see from a hiring perspective is how curious are you? Are you a learner? Are you striving? Do you want to achieve for yourself, for your company, for your clients, whatever that is, whatever your why is.
(20:56):
Are you valuable to the organization? Yeah, let's just actually engage on that instead.
Lucy Greenaway (21:03):
Yeah, definitely. And I think the channel is such a lovely place to be. Normally, I've had dual roles where I've been doing a regional marketing role where you're doing it all. And my current position is the one where I've solely just been on channel. Everybody is a relationship manager as much as a business unit manager, I would say, when they're running their divisions and their partners. Everybody is just great to get along with. They're really open, really collaborative. And we're all in the same fight. We all want the same things. I think it's just making sure that we listen to each other. People buy from people, and I really pride myself on being an extension of people's teams, whether that is the partners team that I'm an extension of or whether it is the channel team at the vendor I'm working for. We might sit under marketing, but we really are a team member of the channel department.
(21:52):
I think that's one of the keys to success. You need to listen and you need to embed yourself in the teams that are around you.
Gayle Kalvert (21:58):
I'm a huge fan of partner marketing for all the reasons you just said, because I felt like it exposed me to sales, it exposed me to marketing, it exposes you to corporate strategy. So as a partner marketer or a partner manager, all roles surrounding partners and the channels give you so much great exposure to different sides of the business. And I mean, let's be honest, it's a really fun place to be too. It's a really fun place to be.
Lucy Greenaway (22:22):
Lovely.
Gayle Kalvert (22:23):
Amazing. Well, we covered everything that I had today. So before we let you go, we always have some fun questions. Okay. Oh, no. All right. No, it's not that difficult. Okay. Are you coffee or tea? Oh no, I'm tea. I'm British. Come on. Yes. I was going to say, wait, we must be tea. Obviously. Okay. Come on. So always hot tea. What do you do when it gets hot for a couple of days in the UK? Still drink tea. Hot tea. Hot tea. Okay.
Lucy Greenaway (22:53):
Always hot tea.
Gayle Kalvert (22:54):
What do you put in your hot tea when you want to spike the hot tea? Because I know you might want to spike the hot tea. Well, then I switch to coffee and have espresso martinis. This is so true. You are an espresso martini girl. Okay. All right, cool. I can see this now.
Lucy Greenaway (23:08):
All right. Thank you.
Gayle Kalvert (23:09):
The other question we ask all our guests is we have a playlist on Spotify. What is your hype song or your banger? Or what are you calling it now? What do you put on when you need to get pumped up? You got to get on the booth, trade show floor, not feeling it. Oh my goodness. You can't come up with it? Oh my God, you floored me. Can I go open one? Come up with one. Okay. You can look at your phone. What's on your most played right now? Come on, you do so many girls' nights. You're always hanging out with the girls. What do you listen to?
Lucy Greenaway (23:44):
I mean, I'm a real Swiftie. So anything Taylor Swift, which is really you didn't expect that, did you? But I went to see the era's tour and then I was completely converted into a Swiftie. So anything, Taylor Swift, my other half is going to really hate me for saying that on a podcast. I feel like my street crides through the floor, but I'm okay with it.
Gayle Kalvert (24:06):
Yeah. It's a polarizing topic and Taylor Swift is polarizing. I went to see the Eras movie, which I didn't know was literally a film of the concert, so I was very disappointed. I thought it was going to be a making of the tour kind of thing. But now you need to say, do you like the newest album or no?
Lucy Greenaway (24:25):
I do like the newest album. How could you not? Yes.
(24:28):
I don't know. Some people are like, a little bit upset. My daughter might be a little upset with it.
(24:32):
Oh, Penelope! I mean, do you know what? If I'm honest, the first thing that came to my mind was who sings it? I'm a survivor, I'm not gonna give up... that one.
Gayle Kalvert (24:46):
Well, we're going to go with that one because that's what came to mind first, but you were censoring yourself. You were thinking that wasn't going to be right.
Lucy Greenaway (24:52):
I'm really good at channel marketing, my music knowledge less so.
Gayle Kalvert (24:56):
All right. We're adding it to the Spotify playlist so you can get some other ideas there as well.
Lucy Greenaway (25:02):
Thank you so much.
Gayle Kalvert (25:03):
Before we go, where can everybody find you?
Lucy Greenaway (25:07):
Find me on LinkedIn.
Gayle Kalvert (25:09):
Okay. That's the best bet. Thank you so much for being here, Lucy. I hope that was helpful. If you know someone that you go to for this topic, send them my way. After all, we're just figuring this out together. See you next time.