Welcome to Inside the Funnel by durhamlane, a podcast where we unpack what’s driving pipeline and revenue growth in modern B2B sales. I’m Richard Lane and I get the chance to speak with brilliant sales and marketing leaders about what’s going on inside their world, what’s working, what’s not, and what they’ve learned along the way. I’ve always found that better questions lead to better conversations and that’s exactly what this show is all about.

Today I’m absolutely thrilled to be joined by Ivan Bulaev, a senior director and EMEA sales leader at Autodesk. With a career spanning across Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Kaspersky, Amazon AWS, and now Autodesk, Ivan is perfectly placed to help us unpack our theme for today’s episode, the modern sales organization and the role of channel partners and alliances, a theme that I’m really interested in personally at this time as well. So Ivan, welcome to Inside the Funnel.

Really great to have you on the show. Perhaps to get us started, could you perhaps do a quick introduction to help our listeners understand a little bit more about you? Yeah, thank you, Richard. And first of all, thank you for inviting me.

I’m really excited to be here. I think both themes that you mentioned, the role of the modern sales organization, how channel partners play into it, they are very connected. And throughout my career, I had the privilege to lead both channel organizations.

So I actually started in the channel with first HP Inc., and then Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and then moved to Kaspersky where I led the global channel organization, and even joined AWS actually to lead channels and alliances team, and then moved into sales within AWS. And then for the last seven or eight years, I’ve been leading sales organizations, expansion, new logo, and customer acquisition, inside sales, field sales for AWS, and then most lately for Autodesk, and serving our customers in the design and make industry. And I’m super passionate about partnerships overall and the evolution that we all have experienced in the last several years.

Yeah, unbelievable. So it’s interesting, actually, even because I feel like we’re coming, we’re coming at this topic from the other ends, the other ends of the line. So I’ve spent very little time in the world of channel.

I’ve worked with colleagues that run channel and I’ve worked with organizations with channels, but I haven’t personally been that involved. So I’m really interested in our conversation. And my, I guess my go to has always been the direct selling organization and durhamlane is an organization that helps ambitious companies to grow from that direct sales approach.

So yeah, I’m really interested to one learn more, but I know that it’s going to be a great episode for our listeners to get under the skin of how that channel partner alliances piece works, because the organizations that you mentioned have built huge organizations on the back of, of those go to market motions. Yeah, that’s, that’s true. And, you know, even philosophically, when I’m making hiring decisions for the sellers that I have right now, I always have a question like, how are you collaborating? Like what are you doing directly versus what you, how are you trying to scale through others? And of course, partners being the ultimate leverage.

And I’m, I’m using the term partners here very broadly. I’m sure we will double click on it because there are so many different partner types, especially in the modern world with, you know, evolution of around AI and everything. But equally, if when I was hiring people for the channel roles, I always ask them if they have any direct sales experience, because I think it always helps to understand what happens at the customer side.

And then if you work from the customer backwards, you really cannot go wrong. So I think it’s very complimentary. Yeah, absolutely.

So, so let’s maybe start then in our conversation today with the, the modern sales organization. You know, what, what does, what does that mean to you in a, in a phrase or what is, what, how would you describe the, the modern sales organization? Well, I think the modern sales organization is the one that’s built around a specific customer type and that strives to serve that customer in the best possible way. As there are many customer types, you know, they’re big and small and industry specific and non-industry specific.

A modern sales organization has to stay agile, you know, to serve the evolving customer needs. And, you know, that can mean a lot of things to give you a specific example in the industries that also serve construction and manufacturing. The impact of AI has been quite visible.

So on, you know, rapid ideation, prototyping and so on. And customers now are not looking to buy another piece of software. So they do all the research by themselves.

So, you know, the decision is 90% there when they first meet the sellers. So it makes it very hard. So they, they’re searching for someone who can get, who can understand their business and help them get to their outcomes faster.

And the value selling is not a new thing, but I think with the use of AI, that’s the only thing that remains. And then from the other side, it’s, it’s very important how you organize your sales organization. And I think you organize it, making sure that you just don’t just have one seller that speaks to the customer, but you also have all the specialists around that seller.

You have the technical capability, you know, in the form of pre-sales or solution architecture. You have your account-based marketing, so you know everything about the customer before you actually meet them first. And then you have your partner sellers as your extended sales force, as your ultimate leverage there.

So these are some of the elements. Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? How I feel like with the, with the introduction and then the rap, the rapid rise of, of AI, it’s almost brought the need for value-based selling, for relationship, for rapport. It’s brought it back to the front again, which, you know, our methodology selling at high level is based out of consultative question-based selling.

It’s, it’s value-based, which I’ve always felt has been the right way. But over, over years, it became more about the number crunch. And I think it’s become now back to the value, having the value conversation.

And I think that’s a really great step up for a sales organization because you have to be adding value every step of the journey. And I think people got lazy and stopped adding value. Interesting, interesting to see how, how it sort of shifts and spins around.

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And I think it’s, it’s interesting to see this evolution and, you know, many companies, especially in the cloud world, they, they experienced this product-led growth where you actually didn’t have to sell that much. It’s just a whole, you know, first SaaS and then cloud and now AI frenzy, like customers just, just buy things, they adopt them.

It’s, you know, there are no, and sellers are often seen as gatekeepers. But right now, like what I’m seeing more and more is that customers are questioning some of these decisions they have made, you know, the bills are exploding and they strive to get to this human to human connection and actually ask for advice from someone who really cares about this, their business. That’s number one.

Number two has deep technical and industry expertise and can, can work, you know, from a consultative angle, but then number three can articulate how specific solutions that they are offering help solve the customer’s business need. So I think it’s always important to anchor, like all the things around us are changing. There’s constant change and, you know, change is one constant, but it doesn’t help if you focus only on the things that are changing.

So we try to focus on the things that stay the same. And one thing that stays the same, customers have business challenges and they’re looking for people to help them solve these challenges and get to their outcomes faster. Yeah.

And, and, and, and, and do that by telling stories and sharing examples that, that resonate for them, I think. So yeah. A hundred percent.

Yeah. And yeah, you mentioned there in, in, as we talk about the modern selling organization, you mentioned probably half a dozen different, different roles that all need to be coordinated and connected, driving with the same reason for being, which is the customer value. In your experience, how good have sales teams been at managing all of those different parts? Is it the seller that has to manage all of those parts? So two questions.

One, is it the seller that has to manage all of those moving parts, people in the right stage of the sales process? And secondly, in your experience, how good have people been at, at that? Cause it’s quite a skill, I think. Yeah, it is a skill. And as in all organization, I have seen sellers of different types of skills and levels of maturity and capabilities.

I think it’s something that you can learn. It’s something that an organization can teach a seller to do. It’s all about, you know, how you organize incentives, how you coach, what kind of materials you give.

You know, one thing which I think was the ultimate sort of sales orchestration experience that I had was what we have built at Autodesk for a new customer acquisition organization we have, which is a concept of a sales pod, where you have a sales pod leader, an account executive, and then you have a team of a couple inside sellers, a couple of BDRs that all belong, they all sit on the same territory as that seller. The territory was quite large. It was around 800 accounts, which kept shifting.

So we were adding accounts, dropping accounts based on the information that we were getting from our data teams. And then we had an extended team, like we had a solution architects or technical sellers, we had account-based marketing, we had specialist sellers, all around that sales pod. And the pod was working like an assembly line.

So the BDRs were providing the leads, and then the inside sellers were working as a control mechanism to see what’s the size of the deal, what’s the complexity of the deal, can we close it ourselves, or do we have to give it to an account executive. And we hired people for the account executive roles with this skill of being able to orchestrate the team, influence without authority, scale through others, do simple things like customer tiering, deciding where they go directly or where they involve some other functions, and honestly just being able to give away some of that control. Sellers are very often very controlling, like they want to know everything.

And that’s not a skill which will allow you to scale yourself. So you have to embrace like, yeah, there will be a little bit of chaos, like people will make mistakes, and that’s all right. Like 80% of the things will still work as planned, and then the remaining 20%, who cares, you know, you cannot control anything.

So yeah, in other words, I think there are a lot of sellers that are capable to learn this ability. That’s interesting, I think you said they’re influencing without authority, what a key requirement in today’s world. And then it makes me also think that sort of old school sales warrior, the lone wolf, that role is so not relevant anymore.

You know, you have to be, there’s no I in team, as they say, you have to be a team player. When I’ve interviewed experienced sales people in the past, when they ever talk about the deal they did, I’m always nervous because no one wins a new contract on their own. It’s always a team, it’s always a team game.

And we talk about that at durhamlane, even though we’re a much smaller company than the organizations you work with and work for. But it’s the same principle that no one does anything as a solo warrior. You know, it’s a team sport, very much a team sport.

And I think with AI now, you almost see some of the AI principles as being people on your team as well. So yeah, the bar is raising in terms of the minimum expectations a customer probably has about what you know about them, what you understand about their business, you know, there are no excuses anymore for not knowing. Yeah, and I completely agree with that.

And, you know, it makes it even more important to have very strong internal data teams that sort of feed this information about customers. Sometimes, you know, we have an Autodesk, we have a very strong internal capability, but we are also leveraging all the external tools. I mean, simple things like LinkedIn and some other providers, but also some sophisticated AI-led tools, which, you know, scrap the internet, find a certain resources.

And then we also try to involve the partners and because sometimes our partners have much more intimate relationship with the customers that we are trying to get. And then the partners, they may be selling our software, but they may have a much stronger relationship with another vendor that’s also part of that customer’s ecosystem. And then it all becomes complementary.

So getting these data streams together and serving them in the right way and a very simple way to the seller, giving them these right signals, the next action and so on. I think this is very critical. Yeah, absolutely.

And if you listen to those that listen to this podcast will know this is a passion of mine, but the connection of sales and marketing together, you know, I think there’s a nirvana there where you have this seamless flow of understanding and data and awareness and one goal, one vision to be customer centric and it should all flow together. So yeah, we’ll get there one day for sure. I know we will.

Yeah. And it’s not perfect so far. Like, I mean, I’ve never seen this, you know, nirvana like fully, but I think it’s the vector.

It’s the direction where you want to go rather than like an ultimate destination. It will never be perfect. There will always be some level of friction, but every month I see improvement along that journey and that’s what makes me excited.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I’ve interviewed people on the program who talk in a sort of pod-like manner like you have already today. And they’ve achieved that connectivity with their marketing colleagues and, you know, amazing things can happen when you’re out there right all the way through the journey, talking with one voice, which is so critical.

On that then, let’s sort of pivot slightly. So talking with one voice, working connected as a team, how does one go about thinking that way from a channel partner and alliances perspective? Perhaps that’s the way to get started into this really interesting area of what could possibly be an enormous sales team. Yeah.

And I think one interesting shift that I have observed in the last three, maybe four years is that even the word channel, like it’s not there anymore as much as it used to be. So I hear it being replaced more and more also, like just the way I’m thinking about with ecosystem. So an ecosystem becomes the product around the customers.

As we said, the buyers, you know, purchase outcomes and not software. That means that no single vendor or partners can deliver them a lot. So you have to think about like an ecosystem around the customer that serves them.

And partners surround the customer around the full life cycle and way beyond just reselling. Because channel, if you think of it, was the delivery mechanism. So now delivery itself is not that important and resale shrinks, services grow.

I’ve looked at the data and I know that MSPs, the managed service providers, the technology partners like ISVs, they outgrow traditional resellers. When I was at AWS, we were joking that like reselling cloud is probably the worst business you can get into. Like it doesn’t make any sense to resell a cloud.

Building services on top of cloud was an amazing business. But you don’t resell it, customers buy it. So I think this is the first foundational shift.

So the channel is not obsolete. So I don’t want to be that dramatic, but it certainly shifts towards more of an ecosystem play and less resale, more services and more technology. Yeah.

I mean, that’s just interesting use of language there as well, because I guess when you talk about a channel, you’re talking about a way through to something. Whereas if you’re talking about an ecosystem, that’s much more customer centric language. Yes.

Absolutely. I think you’re pulling together the pieces that enable you to serve your customers. Whereas a channel is a route to market, if I just break that down in my head.

If you were a consultant into an organization, it’s a new business, would you recommend they have a channel or they build out a partner program? When should a company decide that is the right ecosystem to build for themselves? I think unless you are able to do everything direct and you have a very simple business where customers can just self-service on your website, think Amazon.com as a private consumer. So you don’t really need a partner there for the purchase itself, though you need the partners in the form of third party sellers that are there, but it’s a different partnership type. I would say right from the start.

So I would definitely recommend building a partner program involving the partners that are very close to the customers. So you always start with the ideal customer profile. Who is your customer? What kind of problems they have? And then you can think about the ideal partner profile.

So what kind of partner that customer trusts? And another study which I may quote is the decision makers, the modern decision makers, they very often have much closer relationship with the partners and not with the vendor. So similarly, as they use AI to research a product before making a purchase, they go and talk to partners because partners can provide a point of view on multiple solutions, like on the upsides, on the downsides, on what’s working, on the actual implementations. And then once they make the decision, they can hold the partner accountable for the delivery.

It’s very hard to hold a vendor accountable in many cases, especially if it’s a vendor from a different country. The question you asked about the channel and partners and the partner program itself, in the past partner programs had very simple tiering. The more you sell, the higher up the tiers you go from registered, silver, gold and platinum in the end.

I think that model is obsolete. So you just have to have very different partners depending on what you’re trying to achieve with the customers. You can have consulting, you can have technology, you can have resellers traditionally, you can have a marketplace type of partner, you can have a managed service provider.

So it all depends on, again, what you’re trying to do with the customer. I guess there are multiple, there are probably multiple ways of setting it up and working it on because you may provide your services through a SI or through a consultancy, or maybe you have the consultancy recommending you into their customers for separate projects. I guess there are lots of different iterations that you can take the model in.

I think one of the challenges I’ve found with partnerships is that it’s really easy to talk, but I always say to potential partners, look, let’s find something to work together first so that we can then almost like let the rubber hit the road and work out whether this is right for us. Because I think you can say all the right things and you can say all the right things for all the right reasons and be genuine. But until actually you find that opportunity or until you take that message into the marketplace, until you work together, you don’t really know the other party and how it’s going to work.

Would you agree with that? I completely agree. And I think it depends on several things. So one is market maturity.

So if you’re operating in different markets and you try to launch the same partner program everywhere, recruiting the same partner types, maybe you’re doing it right, but it’s very hard. And in more mature markets, let’s say your established market is the UK, you would probably have way more different partner types than, let’s say, if you’re expanding into Eastern Europe or Middle Eastern Africa. And the maturity of your partner program should correlate with the maturity of the region and of your customer landscape there.

So we were always thinking, and at Autodesk we’re doing that as well. So we have certain regions which are almost fully partner-led because they have local feet on the street and they know their customers. They are incorporated locally and have all the legal presence and so on.

And it’s a different play. And then in the UK or in Germany, it would have a way more mature partner ecosystem with technology, consulting, reselling, and so on. And then the other thing is many vendors and almost every vendor I worked for, they’re obsessed with the global system integrators, the Accentures of this world, the Deloitte’s of this world.

It’s very hard to launch a GSI business, very hard. And I think the way you do that, because it is possible, is by narrowing down the scope, like being very specific about what you want to achieve and why. Let’s say it’s around a certain public sector.

There may be a compelling event in public sector, like Germany releasing the debt break, and therefore the time to act is now. And then you choose one partner like that, you define the roadmap, and then you relentlessly execute. There’s a lot of discipline.

And a mistake that I often see is that, oh, let’s open up the ecosystem for all the GSIs. Very hard, very expensive, like almost doomed to fail. So narrowing down the scope and then building the program, depending on the market maturity, I think these are the two messages.

So being focused, proving, and then building and growing as you own proof points. Yes. And it’s the trust thing, right? So trust, there is a Dutch saying, which I like a lot, which talks about, you know, trust coming on foot and leaving on horseback.

And this partners, it certainly works this way. It’s very hard. It’s a journey.

You have to build trust. And, you know, think about it, if you think from a partner’s angle, like, why would I trust a vendor that invited everyone to the party, where I have to compete with other partners in the same ecosystem for the same customer? I would rather put my trust into someone who’s very focused, know what they want to do, invites very few partners that may complement each other, and then has a predictable, profitable program and technical support. And then once you break that trust, unfortunately, you know, things can go sideways very quickly.

Yeah. So as you were talking, Arvind, I just wrote on my pad, I did the sort of classic triangle and the pyramid, and I put at the top customer profile, because that’s what you said, start with the customer profile. And I think that is so, so true because, and, you know, as a small business owner, I understand this fully.

It’s so easy to get excited by, let’s go and partner with Deloitte. You know, and we’ve tried that, and we’ve done that. But, you know, actually getting focused on the why and the who is really, really important, I think.

Because you can spend a lot of time doing these things, not necessarily leading to results. So another question, just maybe on a more operational basis then regarding that whole sort of partner ecosystem. How do you manage it alongside your direct sales team? Well, I mean, typically, you know, an organization would have a channel division, a department, a partner division of some sort.

So we have, you know, a privilege of having a very strong partner organization within Autodesk. And my previous employer, AWS, has built it from ground up as well. And typically, you know, the easy way to split the team would be into partner sales and partner development.

So partner development, people being responsible more for how do I grow the partner? How do I make sure that they have the modern, you know, sales organization technology stack that they use all the same tools and processes that a vendor may be using? Because vendor has a very different market power quite often and, you know, more modern tools stack and things like that. And then you grow. And, you know, traditionally, the PDMs, the partner development managers, were growing the partners from, you know, silver to gold to platinum and so on.

And that’s how success was measured. Now, it’s a little bit different. It’s how do you expand your services portfolio? How do you expand the types of customers you serve? Or maybe you have a manufacturing expertise, and then you want to shift it towards construction or media and entertainment or something else.

And then you have a very different role, which I think you should never mix up the two, is the partner sales. So partner sales manager is someone who works with together with the partner. And here we come to a very important concept of, you know, cost selling on building together the joint pipeline.

How do you do the joint account planning? Which target customers are you going after? How does this align with internal sales? You know, we were speaking about that, you know, controlling account executive who wants to know everything, you know, this partner plays there, this partner doesn’t play there. So the partner sales manager has to orchestrate all that complexity. And then they all come together around the same, you know, partner in terms of one from the development angle, another one from the sales and just delivering the revenue, measuring the pipeline, you know, closing and so on.

So this is probably the most classic way to orchestrate it. And there are multiple other roles, like more technical, but you know, the simplification is what we do this. And I guess sometimes having both a direct approach and a partner network and an ecosystem that way, maybe Autodesk finds itself at the table more often, maybe with multiple bids for big opportunities than if you didn’t have a partner network.

Yeah, it’s true. And, you know, one question I always ask both direct sellers and channel people I interview is like, how do you manage channel conflicts? Like, tell me a time when you had to manage a channel conflict? Because it’s the thing, because in the limited world of the limited demand and like a very wide supply, you would eventually get into a situation where two partners are bidding for the same RFP or, you know, there is a customer that always in an attempt to get the best price, they find multiple partners and, you know, sometimes there is friction between them. And that’s the role of a vendor to orchestrate all that complexity, to have rules which are clear, transparent, that build trust.

I think Autodesk as a company, which is a partner company, has done a very good job in building that trust. And, you know, we don’t see a lot of channel conflicts. In my past with HP, which was another amazing channel and partner company, we had way more of that because we didn’t have all the tools. Our partner management system was Microsoft Excel at that point in time, or back of a napkin sometimes. Now things have evolved and it’s much easier to orchestrate.

If you come from a genuine attempt of doing business together, partners are smart. They understand that conflicts like that happen, and therefore they focus on building their own unique differentiation, which is, by the way, the role of a partner development manager — how do I differentiate from all the other partners out there, which is not an easy thing to do.

That’s interesting. Because actually a lot of these partners, certainly if you’re working with an AWS or an HPE or an Autodesk, could quite quickly become their main primary source of revenue. So not being awarded that RFP and it going direct could be a big problem for some of them. All fascinating thoughts. Perhaps as we come to the end of our conversation, I just wanted a bit of clarity around alliance. Is alliance just like the platinum version of a partner ecosystem, or is there something specific that makes an alliance an alliance in your experience?

That’s a good question. One thing that has changed quite significantly in the last few years is that co-everything is now the default. You have to do co-selling, co-marketing, co-innovation, and programmes with our partners where we build together certain things or integrate certain solutions through our platform services. You do partner-to-partner teaming — we called it, at one point in time with AWS, the holy trinity, where you have the reseller, the ISV, and a consulting partner, and sometimes also a distributor, all coming to the customer together. This co-everything approach replaces the old model of the vendor serving the partner, and the partner serving the customer. If you do all of this right — co-selling and co-marketing — then you have an alliance around a certain go-to-market strategy, to unlock new opportunities within a certain market segment, say industrial machinery manufacturing.

Sometimes it comes in a simpler form too — an alliance with one of the large language model or frontier model companies, for example. But in my head, it’s still a form of co-selling and co-marketing. If you embrace the theory of co-everything, that becomes the ultimate way to build an alliance.

What a nice way to finish, actually — everything coming together, almost like a solution. The alliance enables you to create that comprehensive solution that solves your customer’s need in that particular go-to-market and marketplace.

Absolutely. It’s the new platinum. Co-everything is the new platinum.

Well, look, it’s been really great speaking with you. Just as a final thought, for listeners thinking about how to get started on the partnership, ecosystem, and alliance journey — what are the top three things people should be thinking about?

I think it’s relatively simple. Who is your customer? Start with the customer and the segment you want to serve. Which partners are already serving this customer, and in what way? What’s important for that partner to consider a new supplier or vendor — is it profitability, technical support, marketing support? Then start narrow. Start with one GSI, start with one partner. Don’t make it too broad, don’t create competition where competition isn’t needed, and prioritise depth over breadth of selection. Start from there and be very clear about your long-term intentions — build trust.

Would you recommend having someone solely focused on that, or does it have to be a full-time focus from the beginning?

In a founder-led company, the best partner development manager is the founder — that’s how trust is built. Earlier in my career, that’s exactly how I did it in smaller companies. But once your company matures, I think it’s a full-time job. There are many concepts around how closely it has to report into sales. I think it has to be very close, because it’s the strongest internal partnership you have — your direct sales team and your partner ecosystem team.

Well, thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate it, and it’s been great talking to you about the modern sales organisation, partners, alliances, and that whole ecosystem. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Richard. I really enjoyed that. Thank you.

And thanks to all of you for listening to this episode of Inside the Funnel. I’ve been your host, Richard Lane. If you found this episode useful or thought-provoking, which I’m sure you did, please feel free to share it with someone in your world. And if you’d like to learn more about how we help organisations build pipeline, head over to durhamlane.com. Until next time, I’ll see you inside the funnel. Thank you.