STRATEGIC FUSION: Where Partnerships and Product Align for Success with Juraj Pal, Part 1

Foreign. Welcome to the next episode of Outcomes. I'm your host, Barry King. With me today is your eye. He's actually a partner and product expert. I say that specifically because his title is very long. Now I'll admit openly on air here, I made some of this up in talking to him, but I'm going to call him the partner led growth expert, former VP of partnerships. This company actually was acquired by Cisco. He's a consultant, he is a guru, he's a ninja. We can use all the buzzwords possible today. But I'm pumped to have this conversation. Truly unique guests, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. And I'll pretend I didn't hear that introduction. Gives me major imposter and cringe.

It was a lot. Yeah, that was a lot. But you know, look, hey, at the end of the day, like you know, a little bit of something about something. We're going to talk about it today. Before we get into the details of it, let's first ask you the question, what does partnerships mean to you?

Yeah, I think coming from an early stage startup where I didn't know what partnership is when I joined and that I'm going to end up with the label years to come. But ultimately for me it boils down to building relationships that one, raise the credibility of your brand and to extend the reach of your product and more so on that to me it wasn't just a role, it wasn't a function, it wasn't attached, it was more of that. Um, it was, it's, it's really how I like to think about partnerships contribution as the influence across the whole entire customer journey from awareness to retention. So really that's how I thought about partnership and that, that's how I help others think through them and I think it's a helpful positioning as opposed to just like a little boxed unit area that doesn't talk to the rest of the company or the business.

Yeah. So sort of like it's, it's a part of everything because obviously what we're going to focus on today is this idea of the intersection of partners and product. But I think what you're describing more specifically, again correct me if I'm wrong, but it's how partnerships truly is this universal application across the organization, product marketing, sales, success, go to market overall and that ultimately it really does touch every point of the customer journey. Is that fair?

Yeah, that, that's 100% how I like to see it and I think there's a lot of opportunity if you don't view it that way there's so many touch points that can again accelerate you across whether it's product option, whether it's the brand, whether it's revenue, any sort type of roi. So it's really important.

And so when you think about then the early learnings that you've had. Right. So I want to frame out our conversation today for the listeners. We've got whatever it is, 17 minutes or something like that left. Let's focus specifically on how in your early days you started to bring together those two groups. I think it's really important for the entrepreneurs that are listening, the early partner managers that are listening, and those folks that are at an organization where perhaps they don't have true alignment to think about partner and product as a unique intersection of continuous value, where perhaps they haven't invested time yet to generate revenue and certainly some more of that buy in we're talking about. So let's start from the beginning in terms of, you know, what are your first experiences and the intersection of those two things.

Yeah, I mean when we started with slido and slido is an audience engagement tool, just for context. Again, as I mentioned, partnerships didn't exist at this function. We were sort of thinking about what can we do today? That's the most significant thing that I can work on and my team can work on to accelerate us towards the big picture. And that ended up being things that we later labeled as partnerships. So at the beginning they're mostly marketing focus, like which brand do we collaborate with, what can we partner with that's going to get us in front of our audience of target users and raise our brand, as I mentioned. But over time it became much more closely knit with product. And this is where I think looking at product like Slido, and again, this is not going to be true for all the products, but there is a sort of group of products that are going to be able to grow through partnerships. And partnerships are going to be at the very core of how we grew at slido. That's why I took on that additional role of head of product and we built those two organizations very closely. And it's, I think when people hear that they'll initially go to product integrations and that's sort of where it ends. And yes, that's one way of thinking, but I think it's bigger in terms of going backwards from your product strategy and product vision and thinking through what are the touch points with partners and channels that can help you accelerate. And for us it didn't end up being too many partnerships and Too many product integrations. There are really select few, but without those, we weren't able to. Whether it's the acquisition by Cisco and joining WebEx, that's frankly about our two, two products coming together to create the One Vision and many other things as well.

So then it sounds like a big part of what you're describing. Business obviously was earlier stage and you were building your go to market. That leaning into technology and integration partnerships, ISVs in particular, it seems, were a good opportunity for you to do what? I mean, I can make my assumptions, but I want to hear it from you. Is it about expanding reach? Is it about expanding product adoption and usage? How are you looking at those partnerships as an avenue for growth?

A big part of it and a starting point, if you will, was really thinking through the workflow of our customers. So always whatever decision we were making, we were thinking, how can I make our customer more successful? So one way of doing it was looking at their workflow of what tools are they using alongside Slido and what are the problems and jobs we done they're solving. And again, perhaps uniquely to Slido, there are other tools in the internal comm space, presentation and video conferencing that created that workflow that our user had to go through. But if Slido didn't become more closely integrated or part of that workflow, they would drop our tool and our product. So really it was about that whether we invest into. And again, we couldn't please everyone. And there are so many variations. Someone's a Microsoft shop, someone's on G Suite, and do we build all of them? Well, ultimately probably yes. But it was really about thinking through our ICP there and how can we create a really seamless integrated product experience for them to achieve the jobs to be done that they're trying to solve.

For those of you that can't see my face, you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple or otherwise. I'm smiling quite a bit, I'm laughing a little bit because I'm with you a thousand percent. I can't tell you how often I talk to folks weekly sometimes, in which they say, where do we start and how do we think about building? And I always say, go look at what your customer is doing in the market where you fit, and then look to the companies that are also helping them to do X, Y or Z, whatever that outcome is you're describing. So I, I think that's so important. It's fundamental, obviously, in terms of building those, you know, connectors and whatnot.