Revenue Rehab: It's like therapy, but for marketers
Sept. 20, 2023

Channeling Success: Navigating the Creation of a Powerful Reseller Channel

This week our host Brandi Starr is joined by Jim Berkman, Fractional CMO at GROW Powered/ New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.   Jim is a seasoned marketing and growth leader with several decades of experience in the B2B start-up technology space....

This week our host Brandi Starr is joined by Jim Berkman, Fractional CMO at GROW Powered/ New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

Jim is a seasoned marketing and growth leader with several decades of experience in the B2B start-up technology space. He has helped dozens of companies cross the chasm, scale, and achieve market leadership with successful exits. As a fractional CMO and board advisor, he has leveraged his expertise in strategy, product marketing, digital marketing, and competitive differentiation to help B2B start-ups grow and innovate.

Passionate about empowering start-ups to thrive in competitive and emerging markets, Jim has hands-on global experience in the LATAM, EMEA, APJ, and ANZ regions.

Jim holds an MBA from Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.

On the couch in this weeks’ episode, Brandi and Jim will tackle Channeling Success: Navigating the Creation of a Powerful Reseller Channel.

Bullet Points of Key Topics + Chapter Markers:

  • Topic #1 Leveraging a Reseller Channel Strategy [07:16] “What we found was that our partners had the customers that we wanted”, Jim explains.  “And so, what we did instead of trying to educate everyone, and I mean we of course did that through general marketing, but through our partner marketing efforts, we really tied our go-to market strategy to where we could benefit those partners”.
  • Topic #2 When is the Right Time to Establish a Reseller Channel? [17:10] First, it is important to have a channel friendly product and you also really need to have expertise on your team, Jim says.  You’ll then need to start identifying partners which will help you grow, likely starting out regionally before moving on to the larger national ones.
  • Topic #3 Measuring the Success of your Reseller Channel [30:19] Jim explains that beyond the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) for the program, beyond tracking the revenue generated from the partnership, you will want to examine engagement, both internally and externally (with your partners).

So, What's the One Thing You Can Do Today?

Jim’s ‘One Thing’ is “the first thing that companies need to do is really look and see does their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) match up with existing companies in the market, whether that be other vendors or channel partners”.  Essentially, you should look for alignment first to see if a channel strategy is a viable approach for your business.

Buzzword Banishment:

Jim’s Buzzword to Banish is ‘Growth Hacking’.  “Growth Hacking is nothing more than well, marketing”, he says, “it's targeted marketing”.

Links:

Get in touch with Jim Berkman on:

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Transcript

Intro VO  00:05

Welcome to revenue rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:34

Hello, hello hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Jim Berkman. Jim is a seasoned marketing and growth leader with several decades of experience in b2b startup technology space. He has helped dozens of companies cross the chasm scale and achieve market leadership with successful exits. As a fractional cmo and board advisor. Jim leverages his expertise in strategy, product marketing, digital marketing, and competitive differentiation to help b2b startups grow and innovate. Jim, welcome to revenue rehab, your session begins now.

Jim Berkman  01:24

Thank you, Brandy. It's so great to be here. I love your intro video. By the way, it's just fun. Thank you. Yeah. So I'm excited to be here, coming to you from Silicon Valley.

Brandi Starr  01:38

Awesome. Well, I am excited to have you in from the west coast. And I appreciate it. I think I drove my team crazy getting that video ready when we launched revenue rehab. So it's always great when someone appreciates the effort. So before we jump into our topic, today, I like to break the ice with a little Whoosah moment that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Jim Berkman  02:12

Oh, there's a bunch. i It's one of the one I'll give you is I'm not hearing it quite as much anymore. For a while though, it was the big thing. And every every CEO, who didn't want to pay for marketing or didn't like marketing, used it and wanted it. And that's growth hacking. Growth Hacking is nothing more than Well, marketing. It's targeted marketing. You know, when you're a little company, of course, you don't have the budgets to do everything across the full spectrum of marketing, which is one of the widest broadest areas within an organization. You know, when you look at the full go to market journey, it covers it covers a lot. And so, you know, when you're a Lean Startup, sure, you need to do very targeted very, you know, sometimes you'll hear called guerilla marketing. But but it's marketing, it's, it's not hacking, it's it. Anyway. So that's my, that's my buzzword that I still would like to get rid of. Yeah,

Brandi Starr  03:29

I'm with you on that one. I'm not a big fan of the, you know, hacking in general, like they, you know, the life hacks and this hack, and everything is like a hack. But yeah, I agree. It is just that scrappy. We don't have a ton of budget. So we're gonna figure out how to make it work. And we got to give it a sexy name. So they've been called it growth hacking, but I do remember early in my career, it was called guerilla marketing. And there's been other buzzwords to refer to the same thing. So

Jim Berkman  04:00

yeah, and one example I'll throw in is the the book that the founder of Samuel Adams brewery, he talks about how he hates marketing. But but they did this growth hack, and it was these coasters that they had in the bar with their logo on it. I'm like, that's marketing place position from you know,

Brandi Starr  04:27

you know, the basics, the things like learn, but now that we got that off our chest, tell me what brings you to revenue rehab today?

Jim Berkman  04:41

Sure. One of the things that I see a lot of early stage organizations that I'm working with right now as a fractional CMO is the need to be efficient, the need to you know, kind of grow beyond what they have been budgets for. And one of the challenges I see is that that most of them ignore channel and partnerships, you know, the channel is I'm a huge channel proponent. I'm not just a channel marketer, but but, you know, it basically turns your salespeople into sales managers for their region, it turns it turns you from, you know, a small organization, maybe with a couple salespeople to, to a national or global organization. So, but the challenge is that, that it's not the kind of thing that you flip a switch, and suddenly, you know, you're a channel friendly company, and it takes you probably need to start, you know, 1218 months, maybe even 24 months in advance from when your CFO is saying, No, you can't, you know, tell the CRO or the VP of sales, no, you can't hire any more salespeople. You know, that's when, you know, a couple of like a year or two years before is when you needed to start building your channel if you want it to fully function.

Brandi Starr  06:20

Okay, I've got lots of questions and lots of places that I want to dig in. But first, I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. So tell me, what is your best hopes for our talk? What do you want people to take away from the discussion?

Jim Berkman  06:44

Sure, I would like people to go beyond the, you know, programmatic, digital advertising is, is the only way towards growth mentality that a lot of startups have, and really start thinking holistically. Marketing is a really a broad area. And if you're only focusing on on one thing, then then you're really going to miss out on the goodness that can come from it.

Brandi Starr  07:16

I love it. And you know, I have kind of been on both sides of the coin here. A lot of my career was spent in a channel and customer marketing. And so I have had to do the marketing components that come along with a channel strategy. And then also, as a consultant, we are partners in a lot of capacities. And so I see some of the benefits and the challenges of how some people get this wrong. So very interested in hearing your perspective. And I know a little birdie told me that you have done this really successfully before. So I'd like to start there. Because I think it is always great when people understand what the win is, and the benefit for the business when they get these things, right. Because it you know, you're talking 1218 months, you know, possibly 24 To get this going, which is a significant investment in resources. So help paint the picture for where you've seen success in leveraging a channel strategy and what that meant for your organization.

Jim Berkman  08:28

Sure, that the company that you suddenly referenced, there was company called Gigamon, that I helped take public a few years back, and we were a new technology in the network infrastructure space. And nobody knew who we were. In fact, nobody even knew they had the problem that we solved, because he was some some changes in the market opened up a perfect storm for us. And so it was it was a situation where we had to grow. And, and yet, nobody knew who we were. And so one of the things that we did was realize that. And this is where I'll talk about partnerships, along with channel because I really think that two heads are two sides of the same coin. What we found was that that our partners had the customers that we wanted, you know, they they, you know, very successful large, you know, billion dollar companies had the customers, you know, this could be Palo Alto Networks could be riverbed could be a number of ones in in those spaces. And so what what we what we did instead of trying to educate everyone and I mean we of course did that through general marketing, but through our partner marketing efforts, we really tied our go to market strategy to where we could benefit those partners. And so I think that is, that's a huge one that a lot of companies miss is, you know that partnerships end up being, you know, just kind of lip service. But you can really, you know, if you're small and your customer base, your, your ICPs are already customers of partners you can work with, then, you know, that's just an easy win. So where we, we then did was we did partner marketing, and then we we engage the channel, we would find a joint channel partner, and, and go to market, you know, that last last mile, if you will. And so it was, it ended up being very effective, we within within two years we went from, I'll be honest, and say, we were a channel company in name, we, for distribution purposes, we were funneling deals through the channel, but they weren't doing anything, and they were getting only, you know, only the small amount of of revenue for just just fulfillment. And within two years, we changed that to a third of our revenue was coming in from our partners, and a third of our another third of our revenue was coming in through our resellers. And what I mean by that is, they resellers, we're generating business at that point, and, you know, so it starts off, where you hand them a deal and say, Okay, we're gonna work this together. And you, you do that a number of times to teach them how to sell your product. And at some point, they may get successful at it and go, Hey, you know, this, this worked pretty well, hey, I think that company, that customer of ours would be a good fit for this. And they bring that to you. And that's really, the crux, where you want to get to is where they're bringing revenue into you, you're not just pushing revenue out to them.

Brandi Starr  12:16

Okay, and I want to break that apart a bit, because I do see, especially in the technology space, but I see this in other industries, as well, where the partner channel is, serves more almost as just a referral network. And in that it is just a very loose relationship, in that, you know, I fill out some form or do something to be a registered partner of this entity. And then, you know, they kind of just hope that somewhere along the way, I refer some business to them, and I get get a little cut of that. And what I'm hearing is that, like, that's one of those partners strategy and name only kind of things that what you're talking about is a lot more collaborative, and, you know, really putting forth the effort, the same way you would in like programmatic and your other, you know, your other typical places that you'd spend. So help me understand what does that really look like? Like, what, what are our revenue teams really doing when we're trying to funnel a considerable amount of business through a channel?

Jim Berkman  13:35

Sure. And you bring up a great point, is that so often? You know, it really is just, it's a loose partnership. It's somebody brought, you know, somebody had a one off deal. Maybe Maybe their customer said, Oh, hey, I need this solution. And so they come to you and go, Hey, we need to buy your thing. What is it again? You know, and that's, that's not a long term, successful relationship there. What what needs to happen, right? Well, and what you often a good hallmark of that is, think about what your channel resources are. And if all you're doing is sending them the same resources that you're giving your customer, then you absolutely are in that trough in for that trough of disillusionment with the channel, it's it's not going to go well for you. And what I mean by that is, what you should be doing is you know, the channel in becomes a focus of marketing, where you have to you have to market to the channel partners and let them know why and how you're a good fit for them. You know, it could be things like Battle cards, it could be playbooks, it could be, you know, testimonials from other channel partners, because what most vendors don't realize is it can cost up to a million dollars for a channel partner to bring on a new vendor. And, and before somebody is way, way way, that's crazy, you know, channel partners make whatever percentage they get, you know, 20 or 15 to 50%, depending on what it is they're selling from the vendor. But they make 100% on professional services. And so when they are taking a, I apologize here I have

Brandi Starr  15:45

got a little guest

Jim Berkman  15:49

is a big fan of the channel too. But but, you know, they channel partners, lifeblood is actually professional services because they make 100% of that revenue. And so if they're taking engineers out of rotation from doing customer work to learn a new product, then you know, that that is you know, and then then their salespeople they have to ramp up. And so, you know, it really is it's necessary to market and treat them as a full fledge really ICP.

Brandi Starr  16:29

Okay, yeah, because what I'm hearing is the kinds of training and resources that you need to be offering to your channel, really are going to mirror what you would a new sales rep in being able to ramp them to be able to sell the product, like you've got to take that same mentality with the channel.

Jim Berkman  16:52

Absolutely. And, and the added benefit is when you start getting good at training your channel that is absolutely transferable to training your your, your own salespeople. So your sales enablement, will will start ticking up.

Brandi Starr  17:10

Okay. And so let's talk about how you got this going. Because you're the point you made earlier, in that you almost need to start down this journey, you know, year, year and a half or two, before you get the know of you can't hire more salespeople. And so that, you know, that for thought to really start this process. You know, a lot of times we're in a situation where we need more revenue, we can't hire more sales. It's like, what do we do? And that's usually the trigger where people start thinking about these things. So going back of like, how do you recognize that it's time, since you need to recognize that it's time before you actually know that it's time?

Jim Berkman  17:58

Sure, sure. Well, I guess I'll answer the question a little differently first, and say, it also is important to be to have a channel friendly product, you know, if you're, if you're selling a, you know, $10 $15 a month $20 A month SAS solution that that, you know, one off people are going to buy, you're probably not a real channel, super channel friendly product, it's, it's not going to be a value. But if if, if you are selling an enterprise solution, and this this could be, you know, physical infrastructure, this could be SAS as well, you know, one of the things I think people forget is that enterprise SAS the sales motion looks very similar to non SAS you know, if you're selling $100,000 a year or more solution, you know, you're still going to need a salesperson you're still still going to need you know, the channel things like that. So, so I'll start there it really you know, I guess I guess the the way you know, how or when you should be doing that if if you've not done it before, is you shouldn't be having staff who understand the go to market motion. You know, if you're a first time founder, you know, I see a lot of buildings and they will come I like to call that the Kevin Costner strategy, which you know, the field of dreams but there's so many products out there I'm, I'm here in Silicon Valley, and there's so many brilliant ideas. And a lot of them never make it. Make it successful because they You built it, and then the people didn't come, you know, there's a reason you need marketing, along with sales, you know, they're both, they're both different, but equal partners in the go to market process. So the first part is, you know, you really need to have expertise on your team, whether that's, you know, a VP of Marketing, whether it's a channel chief, whether it's a fractional CMO, they're really, it can be done a lot of different ways. But, you know, they're the ones who are going to be able to help you to navigate this, if you've never done it before. Next, if you know, the channel is, the partners that you work with ended up being very different as you go along, you know, at the very beginning, you're probably going to work with pretty small resellers, ones that are very niche and know a category and see the value of you, if it assuming you're a new entrant in the market. You know, I think of those, those channel partners as you know, a guy in their dog in their garage, sort of a, sort of a, an organization, you know, and they will, they will go after that niche because they know it well, and they see the value that you bring to that. Next you're gonna move up from that to, you know, to regional resellers. There, they're probably going to be focused on a technology area. But they're going to have, you know, maybe their North Atlantic region, you know, maybe, you know, Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, maybe, you know, just California, but then as you grow and and you get name recognition, then then you're going to be able to start going to full regional, large regional resellers, and then you're going to be able to move on to the big national ones. So so the partners that you're with today, you know, the, the girl you take to the dance today, sadly, is, you know, you're gonna move on from and you won't get rid of them as resellers but but you end up focusing and incentivizing with effort, and MDF funds and things like that to the larger partners as you go along.

Brandi Starr  22:45

Okay, so I'd like to talk a little bit about the work that you put in to actually evolve the channel. So you know, our audiences, primarily heads of marketing. And if they're listening and saying, you know, what, it's time for us to really put some effort, you know, put some legs behind our channel strategy, whether one doesn't exist today, or they've kind of got one in name only, more tactically, what does that look like? And what do I need to be considering? If I'm trying to follow in your footsteps, so to speak?

Jim Berkman  23:23

Sure. So you're gonna want to identify the channel partners that that you want to go to market with, one of the things I did was, I asked each regional sales rep, and we at that point, we probably had, I don't know, 1212 or so regional sales reps. And so I asked them to identify, you know, their top three channel partners. And, and so that that gave us, you know, 30 to 40 partners to identify who, who we wanted to work with. And we would then go and do onboarding for them, we we'd figure out which one of those three was really the ones that that matched up with with our target customer. And then we would incentivize them. Yeah, tactically, but before you get to that, sorry, you would want to, you know, make sure you have an actual channel program. You know, you you need to have a website, or at least a section of your website, you need to have a portal for them. And you know, you can do the big fancy, I've done the Salesforce partner portals. A lot of work a lot of money. But you can do you can do those. A little, a little more guerrilla if you need. There's good ways to do that. because, you know, the bigger the channel partner, you get you move on to, you know, once you get past the guy in his dog, or the gal in her dog, but both both sides, you know, they're they're going to want to know, what does the partner the program look like? What do I get? What resource sources are you going to give me. And so you need to build that kind of a thing out. Another big thing as you are growing in this process is training, you, you probably want to build some web based training. And that's going to be you know, for sellers, it's going to be for technical. So think of it as the salespeople and the SES at the channel partner, and it doesn't have to be super, you know, it doesn't have to be six or 10 hours long. You can, you can, if you need, you can offer a separate certification for you know, implementation and professional services and things like that. Because the way the, the way the process goes, a channel partner, you know, this is as you're getting into the medium sized ones, the sales manager will get convinced that, okay, let's give this vendor a shot. And they'll say, Hey, Bob, I, your your are, in this case, here are Gigamon guy, you know, go go figure out what this product is, and how to sell it and, you know, see if you can make some money. And so all you really have, once you sign that agreement is Bob. And so you you have to get Bob up to speed typically, that's why I was saying you You flipped some deals to them, but not at the end for fulfillment. But but at the big, like middle of the process where you've identified the you know, this is a deal. And you you get them signed up as the you know, the deal Reg, and you walk it through, walk them through the sales process. So, this is where your regional sellers end up being, you know, sales managers in their own right. And so, Bob does that. And and you know, Bogut closes a few deals, and other people in the organization go, Hey, that was that new company that we signed on, tell me about that, you know, tell me how that looks. And so

Brandi Starr  27:41

organic growth with, then you

Jim Berkman  27:43

get Bob and Jane, and then then somebody else's Jane sold that. And so you get Bob Jane and Chris. And so it's very much, almost individual selling, you know, and enablement at the early stage. And so that's why you need you do need your own Salesforce to help monitor or manage this. You know, as channel marketers, it very much was, me and my team would would, would fly around and help get these channel partners. Excited and jazzed up, you know, come in, do a training, could be sales, kickoffs could be, you know, QBR hours. You know, there's a lot of chicken wings and beer along the way. But, but ultimately, you know, and then, you know, promising MDF, you know, hey, is there, is there an event that you guys want to do? You know, can we do a webinar? You know, is there a Thirsty Thursday, we should, you know, we can we can work with you on. And then bringing back in what I said at the beginning, you know, as you're developing your channel program, you should also have your partner program, your alliance partner program being built as well. And so then, then you say, Okay, we want to make sure that we have, you know, let's say, a Palo Alto Networks reseller, in this region that we're going to do a thing with, we have a new product coming out, and, and we want to make sure that, you know, we're hitting this market and so you find the best Palo Alto reseller in your stable of channel partners, and you go to market with them. And so, and the nice thing about that, budget wise is then you, you probably can split the money. So, you know, if you're doing a $10,000 thing, well, you cover 10,000 And you get you know, Palo Alto to go to cover the other half so, you know, it ends up being very synergistic. Very married, you want your partner program to be healthy, you want your channel program to be healthy. Because if if it's not, then the other side of it will will definitely feel that weirdness and they'll disengage.

Brandi Starr  30:19

Okay. And so the last area that I really want to dig into is measurement. So obviously, you know, revenue coming from the channel is self explored, self explanatory KPI for the program, but beyond just the revenue, how do you really measure the success? Because I mean, what I'm hearing, there is still, you know, a significant amount of effort that goes into this, there is still headcount required to be able to support this. So we've got to get resources and you know, revenues ultimate, but what else can we look at, to determine the effectiveness of this effort?

Jim Berkman  31:03

Sure. And, and I'd love to say that channel revenue coming in is the easy, the easy measurement, it's actually can be a little trickier than than that, because, you know, as you know, when when you try and assign attribution to where stuff comes from, if, you know, oftentimes, you need to jump into Salesforce and dig all the way down and find out Okay, where did this come from? Not saying that any of my, my partners on the sales side, have ever tried to take credit, but I've heard I've heard it can happen.

Brandi Starr  31:47

Okay. So yeah, so I mean, we want the revenue, but like, what else?

Jim Berkman  31:54

So, so a couple of things. So, partners by region, you know, that you make sure that you, you look at revenue, and then you look at the number of partners, and the number of deals each of those partners are doing. That gives you a sense of, you know, you have one partner, that's just selling everything and, and you have 99 that are really just dead in the water. Another is channel, like training engagement. So, you know, do they do your named channel partners have, you know, typically, we would do like minimum of two salespeople and minimum of two engineers, who, who would, assuming assuming they're not tiny and only have one salesperson and one engineer, but But you know, you have a minimum requirement that they have to do that. Another is a minimum requirement on revenue to be a silver or gold or platinum, and, you know, and however you want to do it, you know, whether it's metals, whether it's, you know, Ruby, Sapphire, diamond, whether it doesn't really matter what you call it, you know, they're different tiers, so you have different tiers, and each tier, they have to meet requirements to get the benefits and the rewards that you're giving them. That could be, that could be the revenue percentage, but it also could be MDF, could also be, you know, so many events, it could be it could be a lot of different things. And so you really need to look at engagement. You can also look at engagement with your salespeople and see you know, each salesperson do they have three to five channel partners that are that are bringing in revenue? If not, then then maybe you have a fairly on Channel friendly salesperson there and you're going to have to work on that because I've had that happen and where were bicoastal partner, and on one side of the country they were they were selling like crazy, and the other side of the country, they weren't and and you know, it wasn't the partner that was different. So there's a lot of different metrics. One of the things that that I really liked in the program we did was, you may have heard the term campaign in a box. Except I think that it's a good it's a great idea, but it doesn't go far enough. There are some platforms out there today that allow you to to build a campaign infrastructure. And the partner basically gets a gets a seat in your campaign infrastructure. So they can, they can send out their own things and Giga mines color was orange. And so I always like to think of it as you know, an orange fishing pole, you know, give giving, giving them the ability, because, you know, the thing of value to channel partners is their customer base. And so anytime you're asking them to, you know, hey, give me a list of all your customers, you know, the answer is going to be not just No, but hell no. Right. Because that, you know, that's their, that's their lifeblood. And, you know, they're, they're coin operated, they, their ideal customer is one that picks up the phone and says, you know, Hey, Steve, I need a such and such, can you sell me one or I have this problem, you have something that can fix it? You know? And so to get them beyond just answering the phone or answering the email is, is you need to make it easy for them to to cosell with you?

Brandi Starr  36:11

Okay. So yeah, sounds like there's lots of ways that we can measure how both partners are engaged and how they're effective, in addition to revenue. Okay, so I'd say talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes, if nothing changes. And so, in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework, but here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So if what you've said has resonated with our audience, and they recognize that, you know, putting more resources behind a channel program and tapping into the channel is something they need to consider? What's their one thing? What is the first action item that they can take relatively quickly to, you know, start heading in the right direction?

Jim Berkman  37:09

Great question. I guess the first thing that that companies need to do is, is really look and see does their ICP match up with, with existing companies in the market, whether whether that be other vendors or or channel partners, you know, if your eye if your ideal customer persona is, you know, let's say a riverbed customer or Palo Alto network, comm customer of Fortinet customer, then you absolutely need to figure out how you can be best friends with with Fortinet or any of those. And and at the same time, you need to be figuring out how you can engage with those those channel partners.

Brandi Starr  38:06

Okay, so what I'm hearing is our action item is to really look at our ICP, and to figure out where there may be potential alignments within our ICP to figure out where to explore. I really liked that as an action item, because it does, you know, help you to understand if a channel strategy is a viable approach for you. Because if you can at least think of where there may be some alliances like not to say that just because, you know, doesn't come to mind, and that doesn't mean it's not possible. But generally, if you really know your business, you're going to have some idea where those alignments could come from.

Jim Berkman  38:48

Right. And I will take a second and expand that. You know, it doesn't just have to be a traditional value added reseller of our, you know, it could be a managed service provider. Could be one of the large consulting firms. It could also be any of the marketplaces, you know, if especially, especially if, and I kind of decided at the beginning of our talk, but you know, if you have a smaller, cheaper product, you know, absolutely, you know, figure out how to be on Shopify or Salesforce or HubSpot marketplace, you know, there's a bunch of them out there and and figure out you know, they all of those companies have programs to to help you co market with them so that in so it's, it probably isn't an either or, you know, you probably need to be doing those things as well. You know, maybe maybe you end up even if you're selling a larger, more expensive enterprise product, you have something that is You know, figure out a way to carve off a little piece that's quick and dirty that you can have for a free download or a cheap download or, you know, some, you know, something gives them a little slice of value to make them look at at, oh, here's this, this larger solution we also should be looking at.

Brandi Starr  40:21

Okay, awesome. So yeah, so I'm thinking about it is really the discovery. And that quite often is where you start with any sort of, you know, new initiative like this is just really discovering what this could look like.

Jim Berkman  40:39

marketing strategy, not growth hack.

Brandi Starr  40:42

found a way to bring it back. I love it. Well, Jim, I have enjoyed our discussion. But that's our time for today. But before we go, how can the audience stay connected with you?

Jim Berkman  40:57

Absolutely. I am on LinkedIn. Just Jim Berkman all together. I am also on threads if you want to find me there, Jim underscore Berkman. I ditched that other one for a variety of reasons. This past year. Yeah, you can also email me at jim@berkman.net I'm right now I'm working with a lot of great startups on fractional basis. Can I've also done interim basis if if your VP of Marketing just decided to leave for greener pastures? And, and, you know, it's gonna take you three or four months to find the next person in a fractional folks are great for that as well. So yeah, I'm I'm looking forward. Right now. I'm working with grow powerful fractional Group A lot, a lot of great resources through that as well. So yeah, I'm, I'm excited to see what 20 The second half of 2023 and 24 look like now that we seem to be getting back to maybe more normal levels in tech.

Brandi Starr  42:17

Yeah, as I say, I think you know, at this point, normal just keeps evolving.

Jim Berkman  42:23

I'm about I'm about two miles away from what was the Silicon Valley Bank headquarters and, and man, yeah, we're known for earthquakes out here. And that was probably the biggest earthquake that I felt. In the 25 years I've been in Silicon Valley,

Brandi Starr  42:43

I would say we're not going to go down that rabbit hole right now. Because that could be a totally different conversation

Jim Berkman  42:49

to be on that panel, as well. 

Brandi Starr  42:53

Well, I will make sure that we link to your LinkedIn, wherever anyone is listening or watching the podcast. That way they can stay connected with you there. Jim, thanks so so much for joining me. I have definitely enjoyed our discussion. Likewise, Brandy, thank you so much for having me. Awesome. And thanks everyone else for joining us. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Jim. I can't believe we're at the end. We'll see you next time.

Outro VO  43:25

You've been listening to Revenue Rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenue. We have that live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue we have. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.

Jim BerkmanProfile Photo

Jim Berkman

Chief Marketing Officer

I am a seasoned marketing and growth leader with several decades of experience in the B2B startup technology space. I have helped dozens of companies cross the chasm, scale, and achieve market leadership with successful exits. As a fractional CMO and board advisor, I leverage my expertise in strategy, product marketing, digital marketing, and competitive differentiation to help B2B startups grow and innovate.

I am a fractional CMO and board advisor for GROW Powerful and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. I am passionate about empowering startups to thrive in competitive and emerging markets, and I have hands-on global experience in the LATAM, EMEA, APJ, and ANZ regions. I hold an MBA from Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.