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Alliance Marketing: Real world solutions to channel engagement

One key takeaway from the Canalys Survey that they just launched was how multi-vendor technology partnerships were most important for selling and implementing complete solutions. This matches the data we have seen from the users of our partner ecosystem. Over 50% of the PartnerOn user base are marketing over 3 different technologies to their customers as they focus on key solution areas.

The partners in the PartnerOn ecosystem focus on:

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When we overlay industries on these technology solutions it demonstrates a market opportunity that is over $300 Billion by 2026. Complete solutions require multiple technologies, and a channel that can have easy access to these technologies, is the most successful.

According to “Enterprise Collaboration Global Market Report 2022”, they see a CAGR for the collaboration market of 11-12% between now and 2026, growing to over $70 Billion.

A typical telecom collaborative solution requires networking, such as 5G, public and hybrid cloud, and data security. Companies like T-Mobile are a prime example. Brian Potts collaborates with TD SYNNEX to grow and educate the partner base on how and why 5G networking should be added to every edge device used for effective collaboration. The partner group that T-Mobile wished to engage sells everything from Office to Lenovo, and HPE.

If partners are selling 5G solutions for the edge, this leads to the need for technology to secure that data. This can be provided by companies like Fortinet who have dedicated people like Shannon Scott and Jenny Blair to build their marketing and programming in collaboration with the many telcos. They are two of the Alliance Rock Stars at Fortinet.

Global Industry Analysts Inc., (GIA) the premier market research company, recently released its report titled “Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Global Market Trajectory & Analytics”. They project AI services to be over $250 billion by 2026. And again, an AI solution requires a unique partnership of complimenting technologies such as Cloud Services and Cloud Security for successful deployment.

A great example of a technology AI company building opportunity through alliances is the work of Elastic and their CEO Ashutosh Kulkarni. They are going to be @AWS Reinvent showing off their Amazon Web Services (AWS) integrations, and have deep connections with Kyndryl, Google Azure – Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Platform to name a few.

The conclusion is that we are past the days of a single technology solution. Organizations require integrated solutions and the partners that can provide them effectively.

Some people on LinkedIn that are good to follow when learning and thinking about building alliances include:

Cristina Dolan – the content she shares is excellent.

Debbie Foster-Nevin – embraces the importance of alliances

Dave Wright – creates innovation to enhance IOT and other solutions

If you want to learn more about how ContentMX supports alliance marketing through our engagement and support of close to 8,000+ partners in our ecosystem, or to understand what technology solutions they need to complete their offerings or to understand the demographics of who our users are, please reach out!

What role do sellers play in your marketing? 

What role do sellers play in your marketing? Are they sharing content on social regularly? Are they trained on how to engage in Social? 

The intersection between marketing and sales is an important place to be. This is where the “rubber hits the road” when it comes to deploying the key marketing messages that drive sales opportunities. Your sellers are a critical part of your business and they need to be empowered with content and tools that make them look like superstars.

But don’t just take our word for it. Here is a recent LinkedIn discussion on this topic:

Post from Jeff Mesnik

People like Helane Cohen from Microsoft are actively building training programs around LinkedIn (FYI she is a Rock Star, along with Diana Ishak and Dave Fisk). Kelly Nuckolls from IBM has built programming to support her sellers in the past. Kellyn Smith Kenny how do you see the sellers at AT&T supporting your messaging? Or how about the Agents and Master Agents? Wendy Thacker how is ScanSource supporting the sellers in the channel? 

I would argue the sellers can be some of your best influencers, do you agree? But as a salesperson myself, I know few people allow me to write too much on my own.

So if anyone is looking for support on how to build messaging for your sellers, Zach Messler is one of the best messages out there!!

Reply from Zach Messler, Product Marketing Advisor and Mentor

Sellers and marketers ideally should be working hand-in-hand. I know I became a better marketer when I started going on live sales calls.

I know the salespeople I worked with became better sellers when they learned to hear and apply what I would hear as a marketer. If your sellers are not playing a significant role in your marketing–and vice versa–you’re missing out on a big piece of your potential revenue.

Cheers, Jeff! Thanks for the mention!!

Reply from Kelly Nuckols, Ecosystem Marketing Manager, Distributors

Great points Jeff 👏

By working together with marketing, sellers can build stronger relationships with prospects without excessive pressure. Marketing helps sales teams find and qualify leads and maintains contact with prospects throughout the sales cycle.

Sellers should be proactive in providing feedback to marketing throughout the sales cycle (both positive and negative), so marketing is able to pivot and optimize the process and message to suit the needs of the target market.


The benefit of social conversations like this is that they inform and engage a good target audience with comments, impressions and reactions. The ongoing challenge for sellers is generating these conversations. Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and join my conversations – let’s keep these important conversations going!

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