Jeremy Balius: Welcome to Go-to Market Playmakers, where we bring you winning go-to market strategies from the industry’s best. Each episode we sit down with B2B Tech and SaaS founders, executives, and industry Playmakers who’ve mastered the art of taking products and services to market. Whether you’re scaling a startup, refining your go-to market motion, or driving revenue growth through a channel program, or partner ecosystem, this is where you’ll learn the plays that work.

I’m your host, Jeremy Bayless. Today’s theme is Fixing the Partner Disconnect. How to align partners with your go-to-market strategy. I’m joined by John Golden from Pipeline or CRM. John is the chief Strategy and marketing officer there at Pipeliner. It’s a next generation sales enablement platform.

John’s a globally recognized sales and marketing strategist, bestselling author of a book called Winning the Battle for Sales and Social Upheaval, and he hosts Sales Pop. A top 2% global podcast with over 1500 interviews. He’s a former CEO of Huff Weight and brings decades of hands-on experience helping B2B Tech companies scale through intentional go-to-market strategies, sales enablement, customer-centric growth systems.

John brings a lot of insight to this conversation. I value the way that he’s thinking about this from a philosophical context. The way that he’s talking about partner relationships with empathy and trust and understanding and going to market together, I think is really valuable. I hope you take away as much from this as I did.

Let’s get straight into it.

hey John, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for being here.

John Golden: Yeah, listen, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Jeremy Balius: I am, really looking forward to what we’re discussing today. Before we get into it, can we start with your origin story? How did you get to where you are today?

John Golden: Uh, it’s long and winding road, you know, uh, like most things in, in

Jeremy Balius: Right.

John Golden: Um, I, I’m, I’m from my, actually, you probably tell, I, I grew up in Ireland and, uh, in the, in the nineties I joined a, a startup in, in Dublin, uh, computer-based training systems, CBT systems. That was, that did, uh, computer-based training. Um, you know, um, networking, Microsoft apps, all that, or Microsoft products, all of that good stuff.

And then they opened, uh, sales and marketing organi, um, hub in Silicon Valley. And the thing, you know, it was a.com, everything took off, right? So the company was taking off so. They Offered

Offered opportunity because to travel over and support the salespeople, like, uh, represent the development center and, you know, uh, do road shows and breakfast seminars and all of that kind of stuff.

And then they offered offered me an opportunity to go over, you know, the, the general manager in Dublin called me in and said, uh, hey, interested in going to, you know, move into San Francisco to Silicon Valley? And I said, yeah, sure, why not? said, uh, well, how long will it take you to get. Everything together and be ready, you know?

And I said, well, let’s see. It’s 11 o’clock now. I can be ready by three. So I mean, I literally kind of jumped on a plane a few days later. And, uh, took off for, for Silicon Valley. And then, so I was there during the, the dotcom boom, which was, uh, which was an incredible experience. Um, but what I would say is it definitely wasn’t representative of the US right.

In its totality. It was a kind of its own

Jeremy Balius: Hmm. Hmm.

John Golden: the time. And it was, it was, you know, it was exciting and it was, uh, there was so much going on. You’re watching all these new duck coms pop up and all of this kind of stuff. And, and everybody kind of believing this concept that you could have a company that didn’t have to worry about profitability or actually being able to pay for itself at any stage, you know, because you’d all go to IPO, you’d all get loads of money and all of that. And, uh, and I even had somebody working for me who had a friend who, who had a.com and basically bought a lodge up in Tahoe, had a nice house and all this, uh, fast forward, obviously the.com implosion happened. And that poor guy ended up sleeping on the couch of the guy who worked for me, which is, yeah. So the way he went from visiting his Tahoe lodge to him to having the guy sleep on his couch, ’cause it was all, as you know, it was all paper money that

Jeremy Balius: Yeah.

John Golden: have value. and so, uh, and so, which was great because I learned a lot about. Business and I learned a lot about business fundamentals and that as, as you, as you move forward and as things kind of evolve and business evolves and stuff, there are certain things that, that, uh, that stay consistent. Right. And some business fundamentals and, and understanding, you know, your path to profitability and being able to sustain yourself is, is, was one of them. After that I moved to, I moved to New Horizons Computer Learning Centers in Orange County. I joined the executive team at the franchisor and that was a great experience ’cause that was my first time as an executive, like executive level. and then the story I tell everybody, the first thing I did was hire a coach. Because I thought, okay, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do it properly. so I hired a hired a coach and on, on our first meeting, you know, she said, okay, so what are your goals? And I said, Well, I

Well, I wanna be the best VP on the team.

blah, you know. And she goes, okay. She goes, why don’t you wanna be the CEO? And I said, well. I mean, I would like at some stage, but, and she goes, well, if you, if you only set your target at being the best vp, she goes, that’s all you’re gonna be. If you set your target at being the CEO, you know, then you’ll start to prepare yourself for that and put yourself on that path. And, uh, and you also know, you know what you, I. What you visualize and what you put out there, you know, and all that. And, uh, so after that, I moved to a startup in Pennsylvania for a while, K 12, which was quite interesting. I learned, uh, the power of the teachers unions, if you’ve ever tried, don’t, it’s, it’s one of the toughest things to sell into a school districts and stuff in, in the state. The teacher’s union just have a, such a lockdown on them, you know? so it was teacher professional development and, uh, it was changing the paradigm for them, and that wasn’t very, that wasn’t very easy. And after that, I, uh, went, I joined the Mortgage Bankers Association for a while and ran their for-profit, uh, training and, uh, professional development wing, uh, which was interesting because I was there for the, was there for the.com implosion, and I was in real estate for the, for the finance, you know, for the financial crisis

Jeremy Balius: Oh gosh.

John Golden: Yeah, so I always say, you know, if you want to hire me, if you want to implode an industry,

Jeremy Balius: Right.

John Golden: Uh, What was

What was fascinating about.

uh, Jeremy, I’ll tell you, is that, uh, you know, we learned about it. I knew about, I knew about what was coming before other people did because we could see from subprime and the stuff that was going on and, you know, when people were going, oh, it’s only subprime.

There’ll be no contagion. You could see that there was gonna be contagion. Right? And, anyway, a around that time I got offered the opportunity to take over as CEO of Hth weight, which was spin selling. Um, Neil Rackham’s. research and book on, on sales. Uh, so the IP for that, you know, he had set up Hathaway originally.

He was no longer It was owned by a parent company and former, which was fantastic, is they had all these businesses, like 50, 60 businesses, I can’t remember how many, if they hired you to run one of their business units, they didn’t hire you as a business unit. Leader, they hired you as a CEO for that business and they basically said, here’s The

The business.

You go run it. Here’s what

Here’s what we expect you to deliver.

terms of revenue and profit. than that, you do whatever you do. And, and so it was amazing to get, to run a company, basically doing whatever you wanted to do and, and, and run it. And, and so that was pretty successful. So they gave me two companies.

So I was CEO of two companies for a while for them, omega performance being the other, which was really interesting. And I stayed there for five, six years. those businesses were sold, uh, we helped sell them to Providence Equity and then I started up on my own. I do management consulting. Moved back out here to San Diego ’cause my wife wanted to come here and started gathering clients and one of my early clients was Nicholas Kliff from Pipeline or CRM.

And I did some projects with him then he eventually said, yeah, why don’t you just come on and be my right. You know, just be my partner and let’s just do this together. And so that’s what I did and I’ve been with the pipeline 10 years.

Jeremy Balius: Incredible. What a story. So I think the. What’s apparent here, the level of experience that you’re bringing at executive level sales, leadership level, running companies, selling companies, I think gives you a really distinct insight, uh, particularly with what we’re discussing today around partner ecosystems and channel partners, and the theme of today really is.

The partner disconnect and what to do about it. And w with that experience, I’m, I’m really interested in your perspective as we’re looking at partner programs. What are, from your experience, uh, some of the common traps and issues when we consider the secret that. A lot of these programs aren’t successful or are underperforming to expectations or, or just aren’t being run in the way that they should or could be.

What’s driving this and why aren’t we talking more openly about this?

John Golden: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things, Jeremy. And one I would say, and this?

is something I actually, uh, uh, uh, ironically I learned at, at New Horizons. ’cause I said New Horizons was a franchisor, Right.

So I ran the products and programs. So I had, I had products and, and programs and stuff that I needed these franchisees to sell.

And this wasn’t a franchise network where you could tell them what to sell. They decided what they wanted to sell. so it wasn’t like a McDonald’s or something. This is a lot different. So I learned that number one, you have it’s, it’s like when you have an intermediate, you have to sell. the franchisee and persuade them to sell to their customer. And it’s very similar with partners, right? Is when you set up a partner network, you have to sell the partner first and you have to, you know, sell your vision, sell and, and convince them that this is something that they want to do. And then you have to equip them to sell to their customer base. I think that’s, that’s fundamentally where it, it falls down sometimes at the beginning, because I think a lot of companies, and we’ve probably all been guilty of this, you are so excited about your product or your offering, you think, wow, why wouldn’t you want to be a partner?

You know, it’s so fantastic. And we also think that if I say to you, oh, Jeremy, you’re gonna earn 50 points on everything you know, and blah, blah, it’s gonna be great, and it’s gonna be all of this, uh, thinking that. our product of service is so great, and the mar and the, the, the commercials I’m offering are so great.

Why wouldn’t you come on board

Jeremy Balius: Mm.

John Golden: realizing that? only, I’m probably one of 50 people who are pinging you for the, saying the exact same thing. You know, saying My product is the best, I’m gonna give you the best return, and all of that. So I think the first part is, is not realizing that your first sale is.

To the partner is you just even to get them interested. So you have to make sure that, just like you would with a, if you were selling directly, you have to understand their motivations, their drivers and, and you in any partner ecosystem, they can be very different from partner to partner. Uh, and then once you convince them, then you have to equip them. To be able to, to, to sell. And then I think the other part is, I think people have this, sometimes this idea that you can set up, you know, sign up your partners, set up a partner network, and then it’ll somehow organically, it’ll run itself and it’ll be exciting. And you’re not realizing, you know, that, that partners normally have multiple products, maybe they wrap multiple vendors or whatever. And At the end of

At the end of the day.

’em the most money is likely to be the one that’s going to win. But in order to get there, you need to have them actively selling. So you have to stay very heavily connected where you have to communicate, over communicate, you have to support them, you have to get, you have to make them feel like you know, they’re the most special partner your partner network. Because otherwise you’ll die on the vine because you know, out of sight, out of mind. And I think that’s the other thing mistake people make is that they think they can run a partner program without it being high touch.

Jeremy Balius: Okay. There’s a couple of points you made there, and I think we could run separate podcast episodes just on those. This is so good. I, uh, I, I wanna start with the Partners acquisition sale. So getting the partners into your program, why do you think that the vendor or the partner program. Owner manager sees their route to market through partner, go to market play as the motion ending once they’ve signed the partner.

Where does that come from? Do you think? That’s, that isn’t under, well thought out or understood. It’s, it boggles my mind that it could, the motion stops once we get used to sign.

John Golden: Yeah, I think part of the, I think part of the problem can be, uh, and it depends on, obviously on the organization, but if you are, say you want, you’re, you’re aggressively recruiting and you’re saying, you know, I want a big partner network and all of this, you kind of get into that hunter mode, right?

Jeremy Balius: Yes.

John Golden: Where you’re going after more and more. I think that and oftentimes, you know, small, medium organizations, the partner program might be run by one, two people maybe. You know, sometimes in, so if you are in hunter mode and you’re always like trying to recruit new. You’re not doing the, you’re not doing the nurturing part. So either you need to have somebody immediately that you can, you can rely on to do the nurturing part if you have an, if you have aggressive targets on recruitment. Uh, but it’s, it’s something you can’t have. I just don’t believe you can have one person do boats. You can’t aggressively hunt and nurture at the same time. It’s like asking somebody to be a hunter and a farmer.

Jeremy Balius: Right.

John Golden: time. Right. You know, I mean, uh, you know, the hunter’s going to look at the farming utensils and think, okay, I can use this to kill things. Um, but yeah, so I think that, I think that’s part of it. And uh, and the other thing I think also I. We sometimes it’s like this with customers too. You know, with our ideal customer profile, sometimes we overestimate the universe of our customers. Uh, and I think sometimes we overestimate the universe of our partners and we think it’s just like. If you have a competitor and they have all these partners, you think, well, those partners should be my partners as well. Right.

And you can get, you can get kind of caught up in the volume, in, in the volume, uh, game

Jeremy Balius: Yeah.

John Golden: to, you know, really focusing on which are the ones that really sync with us.

Jeremy Balius: Right, . So, yeah, so that you’ve, you’ve got this whole focus on acquisition, partner recruitment and the inability to shift focus or transition without you maybe starting to miss KPIs on partner recruitment. And particularly as you mentioned, if you’re chasing volume rather than Right fit, right size, right.

Culture partners, uh, you’re snapping up. Whomever, why do, why do you think, um, and I’m just picking up on something you mentioned a moment ago, why do you think that there is a belief that things then will organically spin up? Is it almost like it, it feels like dreamland, but it, but I mean, these are hyper intelligent people believing that it’ll just get trendy and happen.

John Golden: Because I think, like I said, I think sometimes you, uh, you know, you’re so invested in your own product or service. You, you feel so strongly and passionately about it.

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: you really believe it can, it can, you know, the partner can and, and you kind of think that the partner is going to. Uh, if you like, they’re gonna contract that same enthusiasm.

You’re going to transmit it to them, right? And they’re going to get, and they’re going to go, wow, this is amazing. I have to do this. And, and I think people fall into that trap and oftentimes, you know, maybe at the beginning a partner will be like, wow, this is amazing. Like, I can’t believe I’m not selling your product already.

This is gonna be fantastic. And you put on your happy years and you think, this is great. This is a committed partner, they’re gonna run with it. And so you. You know, you get a bit complacent. And I think that’s part of, I think, honestly, I think that’s, that’s part of the problem is that we are so enthusiastic that we feel like the other person, like once we’ve explained this to them and once we’ve given them the commercials, they should be just as excited as us.

And, and as I said, they may be initially, guess what? When they hang up the phone or the, or the, or the Zoom or the teams and whatever it is, have a load of other stuff to do. And that’s the thing is, and I think that’s the other thing is that sometimes, partner programs. Unless you have exclusive partners, you know, who say you sell for us and sell for nobody else, which is a, A-A-A-A-A, you know, one model.

And that’s a, that’s a different scenario. But when you have partners that maybe represent, um, multiple products, you know, do a lot of custom work, all of that kind of stuff, um, they, they’re, they don’t have a lot of of mind share left and so outta sight out of mind. And so you, it’s going to atrophy if you don’t have that high touch.

I.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. Just that the, the sheer level of focus required, you mentioned earlier around margin potential or sales opportunities. And I, as a vendor or OEM or manufacturer, I, I have. Proven that you can make so much money by on selling what I am enabling you to do. Why is that not enough?

John Golden: Uh, I think it’s not enough sometimes because let’s, let’s be honest, Jeremy, if somebody isn’t knocking on the partner’s door asking for your product, you know they are, they are likely to be a little bit more skeptical about, yeah, it all sounds good, but you know, something. I don’t really hear that much about your product or I don’t hear people asking me that much about your product or, um, yeah,

Jeremy Balius: Yeah,

John Golden: I haven’t heard of it, or whatever it is.

And so, you know, despite you could

you could say

95

95

on everything, I’ll give you a hundred percent, why not? Um, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to sell it because they’re still going to be skeptical. ’cause you can do all the, all the Excel, you know, spreadsheets you want, showing how much money you can make. if they

they don’t believe

if they don’t have some evidence

evidence.

it, you know, so that’s why it’s really critical is when you, if you’re starting out a partner program, recruit a couple of partners and really work hard to make them successful because you say. Is going to carry as much weight as a, as what a partner says to a partner.

If you can show a partner, say, Hey Jeremy, look at this partner over here who joined us, you know, a year ago. Um, why don’t you talk to them? They’ve made, you know, loads of money with us. They’re, they’re really happy, you know, blah, blah, blah. Um, you are much likely to be more persuaded by that than anything I say.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, it really sounds like it’s, it’s more than look at how much money you could make with us. All you have to do is go sell it, and it’s more of a how can I get within your team or, or be alongside your team to unlock that for you.

John Golden: Yeah. absolutely. Absolutely.

Jeremy Balius: What is that unlock?

John Golden: what is that?

Jeremy Balius: Yeah. How do you enable that? How do you, so that, that those first couple of partners, what do you do?

John Golden: I think you have to treat them as a, as a leveraged sales force, and you have to treat,

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: have to support them in the same way that you would support your direct salespeople and as much as possible, I think you also need to, you need to kind of co-opt them so they feel like I. They’re part of your, you know, that they’re, that they’re a real partner, that they’re, they’re part of your organization. Uh, you know, for instance, like when we have partners, you know, we set ’em up on pipeline or, and we have them in the system and everything, you know, and they get everything that everybody else gets and that, but I think that’s the unlocking part, is making them feel. Like they’re part of your sales organization and, and treating them like a leveraged sales force and treating them the same as your direct salespeople.

And that, that I think is, is the unlock is when people feel okay, they’re putting all of their resources at my disposal. They help me, I can talk to their salespeople, all of this kind of stuff. That, that for me is the key is, uh, you know, when you feel truly supported. So then you’re more likely to take a leap of faith.

Jeremy Balius: I really like how you’re vocalizing that, that is, that is really powerful. I really, I really like how you’re talking about, uh, effectively positioning yourself as part of their team or that they’re an extension of your team without there being that arm’s length feel.

John Golden: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, absolutely. And the best partner managers I’ve ever seen are ones who really run it like that. They run it like their own sales team, and they, and, and you know, and they, and, and they really, you know, support and drive in and they advocate for them and they, and they’re there, you know, they’re always there for them.

They’re always helping. I mean, for me, that’s, that, that’s the key is you, you have to run it like they’re part of your organization even when they’re not.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah. Is that where some of the disconnects come from, perhaps that that partner manager and the relationship with the internal marketing and sales teams on the partner side?

John Golden: Yeah, no, I mean, let’s face a channel. Conflict is, is always a thing, and, uh, and, and so you have to be very careful, especially in the early days and maybe in the early, in the early relationship with a partner. You have to be very careful about how you manage, you know, channel, you know, the potential for channel conflict, uh, as you know. Um. You know, sometimes it’s, you know, a direct sales person will have maybe a company in their, in their, um, database, but one they haven’t really done anything with, they haven’t even had any contact with. But the minute the a partner makes contact with them, suddenly it’s their account and.

Jeremy Balius: Right.

John Golden: And so you, you have to, you have to be very careful, uh, about, about that.

And you, especially in the early days, you have to manage that very, very carefully. And I think also the best way to do things like that is, you know, to get everybody together and say, you know, let’s figure out how we can have a win-win situation here. Or sometimes you may have to sort of just. Tell your direct person, like, okay, this is an early partner, you’re just gonna have to back up.

Meanwhile, here, I’ll give you another account or something to, to make up for this. But I think that that, that’s really important because it can very quickly become an us and them thing they’re external. And, and you, uh, and it’s very easy for, let’s say a direct salesperson to say, but look, you know, you’re giving away 50 points to them.

I sell it. You’re only paying me 15% commission. Come on. Like, you know, the, why are you doing this? So you also, I think, have to educate your direct sales force and say, this is why we have a partner, uh, strategy. This is how the partners, uh, operate. This is how we make sure that there’s no, um, there’s no conflict or overlap and look in

Look at them

rather than subtractive.

And maybe, you know, there’s, there’s opportunities for you to work with them maybe and to,

for you. Maybe they’re situated somewhere.

a customer, which could be great for you because maybe you have a local presence that you could, you could leverage to help in your customers. So it could be a win for everybody, but I

Jeremy Balius: Definitely.

John Golden: gotta, you’ve gotta hit the.

Channel conflict thing, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta head that offer at the, you know, almost immediately.

Jeremy Balius: Oh yeah, I have seen that more, uh, frequent than not the conflict and the adversarial relationships and disgruntlement. Um, but if, let’s flip the script a little bit. We’ve been talking about pitfalls. What does the successful partner program look like from your perspective? What’s hum?

John Golden: Yeah, like I said, I mean a successful partner uh, program is when you really

Educate.

You know, you really educate the partners on your value proposition and. You understand their business. So it’s a two-way thing. You don’t just educate them, you get educated by them. You both, you know, you understand your partners, you provide them with the tools and, and the assets that they need to be successful. You, you know, like you create new, you know, newsletters for the partners. You suc, you share success stories. Uh, so, uh, like I said, the most I’ve seen the best ones is when it’s run by a, you know. One or two people who are really invested in it and are constantly, uh, constantly informing and updating and communicating with the partners.

And then over time starting to focus on the ones that really are performing for you and have the greater potential. And I think the other thing, Jeremy, sometimes we hang on to partners just because it looks good to have a bunch of partners on your website. But I think, I think when, when you’ve partners maybe that it turns out that it’s not a good fit, they’re not really engaged or whatever, it’s much better to sort of go, okay, you know, maybe we should move on from this partnership as opposed to just having these ones on life support because you think it looks good from a numbers point of view, like look at all the partners we have. I think that’s self-defeating at the end of the day, because even if you only have them on life support, you’re still, you’re still. Uh, you’re still giving

Giving.

time or some attention or whatever that you could be using on the productive ones or the ones that have the high potential ones. So I think that’s

I think that’s the next thing.

you need to have somebody running your partner program who’s able to identify the high potentials, able to develop them, and it, and has the discipline to maybe, you know, remove the ones that are not performing, that don’t have potential, that doesn’t look like, that haven’t worked out.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, I, I totally understand the need for deeper relationships in a almost empathic, empathetic sense of it being a two-way street. And I like, I like how you’re, you’re talking about that. To what degree would a vendor or the partner manager themselves. Um, and, and even the partner needs shared visibility on metrics.

Is this something that needs to go deeper into analytics and data beyond just the relationship aspect of what you’re talking about?

John Golden: Oh yeah, absolutely. And that’s why I think, uh, you know, when we have partners and we have them in our system and stuff, or if you have a partner and it’s, they’re not, you don’t have direct visibility ’cause you have a, you know, a CRM like we do. I think it’s important that they share the. They’re that they share their data and you share your, you, yeah, you exchange data.

But I think you need that visibility. You absolutely need that visibility into, the metrics of their business or the subset that you know is relative to, to, to your, uh, your partnership. Because, uh, you know, let’s face it, um, metrics keep us all honest, don’t they? And, and, and it’s, and it’s a lot easier to focus on, on the real issues when you have metrics behind it, as opposed to when you, when there’s an absence of metrics, you know, we tend to fall back on of emotional responses to things and

Jeremy Balius: Yes.

John Golden: what we assume, or what we perceive or, or things like that.

And, uh, and being, you know, human nature being what it is, you know, we sometimes tend to, you know, almost assume the worst, don’t we?

Jeremy Balius: Yeah. Well, not just that, I think there’s been many cases where partners are fearful. Because they’ve experienced the, the worst where they, you know, where they, they get, uh, suddenly they’re competing with their vendors. Um, uh, for unfortunately that’s, that’s, that’s not uncommon, um, in, in, in their past.

John Golden: Yeah. And, and, and, and, and don’t get, you know, don’t get me wrong, I mean, running a, in a successful partner program, it’s not easy, not easy at

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: and that’s why people who are good at it are, are, are worth their weight, I think.

Jeremy Balius: A hundred percent. Um, let’s shift the focus onto the, uh, onto the CRM itself. Where, where do CRMs generally fall short when we’re thinking about faired responsibility, co-selling and partnerships?

John Golden: I, I, I think, uh, I think where most CRMs fall down is the fact that they’re not, uh, they’re not really built to accommodate, accommodate partners.

Jeremy Balius: Mm-hmm.

John Golden: They’re the entrepreneurs in any organization, just like partners are generally entrepreneurs. because if you take it, salespeople are the normally the only people in an organization who a large amount of, and sometimes all of their, uh, of their compensation is variable. Uh, you know, the, the, the accountant down the hall, me does a great job and everything, you know, but they’re not worrying about how much they’re gonna get paid this month or next month or whatever, because they know salespeople not so much, and therefore they have to be creative. So we always said. doesn’t the salesperson have all the tools?

Why don’t, why does management have a bunch of tools to the salespeople? Why don’t we allow them run their own books of business like a business, right? And so same thing for partners is allow access to all of the tools and allow them, you know, in your CRM to be able to run their, their business or their book of business, uh, you know, um, themselves.

And just give them access to, to all the tools and assets you have and welcome them in because at the end of the day, um. The more integrated they feel, the more successful it’s going to be. But that’s, but that’s our philosophy around CRM is like, give people the tools they need to succeed allow them to be creative.

Then with that tool set.

Jeremy Balius: I love that uh, you’ve not heard a CRM philosophy. In that way, and I think where my mind goes first is by treating salespeople like entrepreneurs, it’s almost like you’re treating them as internal partners, and therefore the structure of enabling your internal partners flows outward into your external partners.

John Golden: Yeah, I, I think it’s a perfect way of, uh, a perfect way of putting it. Uh, and, and that was always our philosophy from the beginning and from the founder of his philosophy was a sale salesperson first approach, right? Uh, and, and building a system that worked for, for salespeople, uh, because let’s face it. were built it for command and control. And that’s

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: that’s what they were. And most

Jeremy Balius: Hm.

John Golden: and most CRMs today still have the same, it’s still built around this, you know, it’s sold on this concept of look at all the, look at all the great reports you’re gonna get, look at how you’re gonna be able to, you know, track and manage your people and all that.

And, and the salespeople are left outta the equation.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, the dreaded, uh, needing to update Salesforce for every task that salespeople talk about.

John Golden: No. Exactly. Exactly. And the cumbersome, and that’s why, you know, that’s always our, our. Driving philosophy has always been to, to make everything as easy for the sales person as possible and to help them and to inform them and to equip them so they can do what they do best, which is build a relationship, build, be creative with solutions.

And it’s the same thing with, with, with partners, is we want, we want people to focus on. The really va high value activities of building relationships, of creating creative solutions and stuff. Not on, not on, not on tech, focusing on clicks and you know, I gotta input this here and I gotta do this and whatever. You know, that’s just, you know, that’s self-defeating.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, I, uh, it is particularly if you’re hiring and placing people who are meant to run their own business and you’re trying to micro control control on, on task completion.

John Golden: Yeah, then you’re gonna get the, the, the feedback that I used to get in, in some of the companies I was in when we had, uh, actually had Salesforce at a couple of organizations. And, if I had a dollar for every time a salesperson, I said to Salesforce, you know, you’re, you, isn’t up to date. Well, do you want me to do data entry or do you want me to sell and I, well, ideally I’d like you to do both. Well, I, I, you know, I, I’ll try to get to it, but you know, I’ve got all these and. And for me, and to be honest, they were right in many ways because it was cumbersome and horrible. Uh, and so taking away that and taking a different approach.

And, and I had, I wrote a book at one stage, um, winning the Battle for Sales. And it was, uh, analogies between sales situations and, and, and famous battles. But I wrote one on CRM, which is. Actually, it’s a funny story. Nicholas Kimler, the founder of Pipeline or read the book, and he contacted me. That’s how we got our, that’s how we got in contact.

He contacted me because of

Jeremy Balius: Wow.

John Golden: chapter I wrote on CRM,

Jeremy Balius: Wow.

John Golden: said, uh, when, when the salespeople here, there’s a CRM coming, they just go, oh, and the good times are, the good times are over. and I use the analogy of David and Goliath. ’cause in the, in the, in the story of David and Goliath. Uh, David is initially, the king initially gives him the greatest, latest weapons and armor and all of this, and David it on, goes and he goes, I can’t move in.

This takes it all off, gives it back, and goes out with his sling shot and takes it down. And my point was, It’s, it’s simplicity. At the end of the day. It’s not about complicated, you know, the latest, greatest and all of this. It’s about, it’s about the right tool for the right moment. And for David, that was the right tool for the right moment. And, and that was my, and so, uh, that’s, that’s our philosophy, is that it should be, it should be simple, easy to use. It should be intuitive. It should help you, it should not weigh you down like the, like the armor from the king.

Jeremy Balius: Yeah, what a fascinating approach. Uh. Gosh, I think you’re, uh, you’re having written a book and then that book unlocking the next chapter of your life is like the ultimate ROI in content marketing

to, to have been found based on a chapter in a book. That’s amazing. What does that look like in practice? I can’t, I don’t think I can even visualize it in the way. How does that philosophical approach translate into the tech to enable salespeople and to enable partners to do what they do best without the friction of using the tech?

John Golden: I think it’s, I, I think it’s actually, it, it’s quite simple. At the end of the day is, is number one, um, salespeople and, and you know, this goes for partners too because, you know, you’re hoping that they’ll sell, are generally visual people. So the first thing is, you know, you make it visual you and we visualize as much as we possibly can. Uh, and the other thing too is. We also recognize that people have different styles too, and look at, and, and process information differently. So we provide multiple views of everything.

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: you, if you like a visual pipeline, you can have a visual. If you, if you’re somebody who actually likes lists. You know, we can do it in a list view or whatever.

Bubble chart view, map view, whatever. So I think part of it is making a visual then not forcing people down a particular road saying You have to view this, this way. You can view it in the way that works best. Best for you. and then obviously since the advent of ai, you know, we, we started working with AI in, in about 2000, uh, 18, I think, when we brought out a mobile app.

And we had some, um, AI in that. And then over the last year or so, we’ve been consistently implementing ai, but AI. Not for the, not for the sake of it, but for AI

AI.

that really can take some of the burden off of salespeople and again, help them to be the most informed they can be and to be able to, interact even better with customers.

So, you know, we have AI tools that can analyze your whole communication thread. You know, email, text, whatever it is, and provide you with this a, a

sentiment and see how it’s changing

with the notes, the breakdown, uh, extra

information.

so that you can be more informed, uh, when you, uh, when you have that call with your prospect or customer. And that’s our, and that’s how it comes alive, uh, Jeremy, is that we look at every way that we can is to make your life easier, but not just easier to make you better informed, more, you know, uh, have greater insights. And so have the CRM actually working for you so that when you, you know, start your day, you’re gonna go into your CRM because you’re gonna say, listen, have a call with Jeremy.

I’m gonna go in here and now I’m gonna review all of our. All of our contacts, I’m gonna see the support stuff, I’m gonna see everything that’s ever gone on with Jeremy. And I’m gonna be able to use AI to help me sort this out and, you know, provide me, you know, with the focus I need, need here. And, uh, and that way I.

I’m seeing it as a tool that’s actually enabling and helping me as opposed to something that I have to, after my call, I could go and put this in the CRM, I mean, you can talk to the CRM, you can even put, you know, put your notes in verbally and it’ll, uh, so we’re trying to make it as low, uh, low overhead as possible, for the salesperson. And the other thing that we’re doing now, Jeremy, is we’re starting to implement AI agents. So that, uh, we’ll be releasing, uh, next week, I think it is. Next week we’ll be releasing our first reporting agent so that we’re also taking the, the burden off of you to even learn. you don’t even have to learn how to do various things within the system because you can actually use natural language queries, uh, you

Jeremy Balius: Mm.

John Golden: the reporting coming up.

So I can either speak or write in saying, here’s the report I need and everything, and it’ll start to generate and then, you know, I can get into a conversation and help it. You know, we have done it with online forms and, and various other things. And I think

Think that’s.

That’s the future is, continuing to lower the learning, uh, curve and overhead for, for somebody to use, uh, to use our CRM and to leverage agents as much as possible so that you can, you know, you can basically talk to the system. And, uh, and now think of how you can unlock the power that perhaps you wouldn’t, you know, would’ve taken you maybe a few months to learn how to do this report or that report or whatever. Now, being able to talk to the system and the system can generate the report or, or generate the online form or whatever it is, or generate the email, whatever it is you need. Uh, we’re con consistently lowering the, the learning overhead.

Jeremy Balius: This is incredible. So essentially you plug in and the system adapts to you. Is that, is that where you’re headed?

John Golden: Well, yeah, I mean, the system adapt, uh, uh, you know, adapts to you anyway, um, because it, it’s set up to give you alerts to highlight where things are, so it adapts you anyway. But I think more to the point is it’s making it. simple for you to use because now as I said, you don’t have to learn so much about it.

You can

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: just ask it to do things for you. And this is the beauty of the power of agents. And uh, and I think this is where AI agents, intelligent agents, uh, can really benefit us. ’cause I, I see it, Jeremy, to be honest, when we’ll never learn how to use software again, we will

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: we will just communicate with the software through natural language.

Jeremy Balius: Well, I think this is an, this is answering my next question, but is this what you mean by scaling, by capability, not complexity. I.

John Golden: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, it’s part of it. Um, we’ve always said, uh, that as you know, when you, when you leverage or when you start to expand and leverage your use of things, it tends to be, the complexity tends to go up, right?

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: we’ve always said that everything we do, we have to keep it simple and intuitive, and so you can leverage more and more of the system, you know, you can as you grow. the complexity level, the learning curve doesn’t go up. You know, uh, exponentially as you start to use more of the system. So, so that’s really what I mean by, and now with, with ai and AI agents and, and natural language, uh, querying and that again, you can scale your use of the system without. It, it be without needing, like learn it for months and to have the complexity and, you know, all of that. So yeah, that’s why scale, you know, scaling with the by, by capability and not complexity because most, most systems, as you start to use, they’re more powerful features. The complexity level normally skyrockets.

Jeremy Balius: Hmm, absolutely. Awesome. For those channel leaders, partner managers who feel stuck, what would be your advice? For them, uh, to get unstuck. Where do they start?

John Golden: That’s a great question. Um, I think, I, I, I always believe, uh, uh, Jeremy, that when you’re stuck or when you’re in a rush or whatever, whether you’re a salesperson, a partner, manager, or whatever it is, whatever role you’re in is the first thing to do is to go back and ask yourself, what were you doing? you weren’t stuck, what were you doing when you were, you know, and let’s face it, you’ve, you’ve had some success in the past, otherwise you wouldn’t be in the job that you’re in, right? So go back and ask yourself, what did I used to do? And examine your successes in the past and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll wage your, I. I’ll raid you a beer, tell anyone out there that I guarantee you, you or your choice of drink, that you will find that there are some fundamental things that you used to do that you’re not doing anymore because you’ve either, you know, you’ve become experienced since you become complacent a little bit.

And I, I always is go back and look at when you were successful and really do a good kind of autopsy or analysis on, on, on your success in the past and look at. Everything you did, and then ask yourself, am I doing the same things today? Am I paying attention to all of the details? Because I guarantee you that that is, that’s one of the, the, the, the ways of unsticking yourself.

Because we all, once we do things for a while, we all become complacent. We all, I, I always use the analogy like I do martial arts, right? And uh, sometimes. Like, I’ll go to class tonight and sometimes my master will say, okay, tonight we’re just going to, we’re gonna do basic footwork, right? And you’re going, oh, I’ve done this.

You know, I’ve done basic footwork. You know, I’ve

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: doing this 20 years. Come on. Like I know this. But he’ll always find something that you’ve, you’ve developed a bad habit or you’re doing something that you slightly differently than you should, and suddenly you realize, you always have to revisit the fundamentals.

And apparently, I mean, I’m not a basketball fan, but apparently Kobe Bryant, I. He used to be the first one in the LA

Jeremy Balius: Hmm.

John Golden: to be the first one in training, like ridiculously early, like five in the morning or something,

Jeremy Balius: Mm-hmm.

John Golden: on his own. And you would think probably practicing trick shots and this and everything.

No, he is practicing his high school drills. I. Because he knew that in order to be the best and to do all this other stuff is he needed to continually revisit the foundation. So that would be my advice to people is go back and look at the fundamentals, look at the things you used to do, and be honest with yourself and say, am I taking shortcuts now?

Am I skipping over things that I, that maybe I think are unnec? You know, that I think I’m unnecessary. I don’t need to do that anymore ’cause I’m so experienced for. For me, that would be the one piece of advice is just go back and revisit the fundamentals.

Jeremy Balius: Awesome advice. Love it. John, this has been awesome. Um, I’m taking away a lot of this. I need to look into a couple of things more. I need to deep dive into pipeline or more and, and get a better understanding of these AI agents, which is pretty exciting coming out in the coming weeks.

John Golden: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Balius: Awesome to have you on the show.

Thanks so much.

John Golden: listen to me. Fun conversation. Thank you, Jeremy.