Partnerships Unraveled

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Ep. 251 – Larry Walsh, CEO & Chief Analyst at Channelnomics
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst at Channelnomics. After three decades studying how vendors and partners work together, Larry brings a data-driven, refreshingly clear-eyed view of what actually makes channel relationships thrive, and where the real opportunity for growth is hiding.
Larry opens with a distinction that reframes the whole vendor-partner relationship: vendors tend to operate on narrative economics, describing value in ways people can believe, while most of the channel runs on vibe economics, things partners feel but can't always articulate. That gap is where misalignment creeps in. Larry shares an example of a vendor struggling with partner engagement, only to discover they were playing defense, protecting margin so tightly that the benefits weren't worth the effort. The fix isn't about equal treatment, it's about equilibrium: creating conditions where partners make money with a vendor, not on them.
The conversation turns to friction in the go-to-market process, and Larry points to Channelnomics' own research on quoting: some partners wait three to five weeks for a quote, at a moment when customers expect Amazon-level speed. He also describes how partner programs accumulate like sedimentary layers, with policies piling up long after anyone remembers why they exist. His approach isn't chasing perfection, since that's expensive and never fully reachable, but building a continuous habit of asking whether a rule or process still earns its place, and removing what only adds drag for partners.
Looking ahead, Larry sees the channel's role only deepening: less about moving boxes, more about becoming the connective tissue between vendor promises and customer outcomes, helping partners go further, faster, and with less risk.
Key Takeaways:
Equitable Outcomes Drive Partner Engagement
 Larry points out that vendors and partners tend to run on two different kinds of economics: vendors describe value in narrative terms, while partners operate more on feel, things they sense but can't always put into words. When those two are out of sync, engagement suffers. He shares a real example of a vendor whose partners weren't engaging, only to find the vendor was "playing defense," making it too hard to capture even modest benefits, and the fix was building genuine equilibrium rather than identical treatment.
Partners Earn Only When They Perform
 Larry breaks down why channel economics work the way they do: a direct salesperson has to be paid, trained, and supported whether or not they close deals, while a partner only earns when they deliver. He notes that a channel sale runs roughly 10 to 15% more economically than a direct one, largely because partners are mining the white space already sitting inside their own install base.
Quoting Speed Decides the Sale
 Drawing on Channelnomics' own research, Larry shares that a third of partners are waiting three to five weeks for a quote, at a time when customers, conditioned by Amazon-style buying, expect answers instantly. He points to vendors managing a quarter million SKUs or custom-built hardware as examples of how quickly complexity can turn a quoting process into a lost sale.
Probability Models Replace Guesswork With Strategy
 Larry describes a recent project where a global vendor was deciding how to restructure a regional partnership, and Channelnomics ran the options through a probability model that scored four different configurations by likelihood of success, one coming in at 85%. Rather than replacing judgment, the model gave the vendor a clearer set of trade-offs to weigh, which lined up with their budget and capabilities.
The Channel Keeps Evolving Into Trusted Advisors
 Larry pushes back on "save the channel" narratives, pointing to a partner ecosystem that's larger than ever, with more than 600,000 partners in Microsoft's network alone and roughly 1.2 million worldwide. His view is that the channel's role keeps shifting, from selling boxes to clouds to now selling outcomes, with partners becoming the connective tissue between what vendors promise and what customers actually experience.

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In this special 250th episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Dorian Kominek, Channel Leader for the Zapier Solution Partner Program. After a decade as an entrepreneur and years building partner programs across services and SaaS, Dorian brings a refreshingly grounded view of what channel work actually is, and why humility might be its most overlooked skill.

Dorian traces his path from a decade as an entrepreneur through partner programs in appliances and food service, and into the two years he has spent building Zapier's Solution Partner Program, a network of agencies that help customers automate their workflows. Along the way he picked up a philosophy he now leads with: human first, living close to the surface of who you are, with less pretense and more willingness to be vulnerable. Looking back at his years in traditional channel roles, he points to something tech could stand to learn: humility, and the discipline to get down to brass tacks and keep things simple.

That same directness carries into how Dorian sees tech's partner ecosystem. Because SaaS products are intangible, lines of code rather than physical goods, companies have been free to get creative, building service partners, integration partners, and resellers across every hue of what he calls the partner rainbow. Bringing that kind of program into a company that grew through product-led growth took a different kind of case-making. Dorian frames building a channel function as an act of entrepreneurship, one that thrives when it rides alongside senior leadership's broader strategy from day one.

With Zapier's own product evolving fast alongside AI, Dorian's approach is to stay iterative: lean on partners as eyes and ears, take small steps, and let the relationships, not the roadmap, lead the way.

Key Takeaways:

Human First, Not Just a Tagline Dorian's LinkedIn line, human first, describes people who live close to the surface of who they are, without the layers of pretense picked up over a career. He admits that living this way makes you more vulnerable, but says it feels more authentic and makes it easier to build things together with partners.

Traditional Channel's Underrated Edge: Humility Before tech, Dorian ran distributor relationships at Miele and channel marketing at Compass Group, work he says keeps things refreshingly simple: a customer's dishwasher breaks, and the job is to offer real options. He believes tech does its best work when it carries that same directness forward, since the underlying job is still just one-to-many relationships built on people helping people.

Every Hue on the Partner Rainbow Because software is intangible, just lines of code rather than a physical product, Dorian sees tech partnerships as far more inventive than the traditional distributor-and-installer model. Instead of a handful of fixed categories, companies can build service partners, integration partners, and resellers across, in his words, every hue of the rainbow, giving the episode its title.

Treat Channel Building Like a Venture Dorian frames standing up a channel function as an act of entrepreneurship: small bets, fast iteration, and a willingness to take risks before the data fully proves the case. He notes that mature companies naturally lean managerial and protective of what they've built, so the programs that succeed are the ones that align closely with senior leadership's broader strategy.

Staying Iterative When the Product Won't Sit Still With Zapier's product shifting quickly alongside AI, Dorian has learned to let go of trying to control every outcome. His approach now is to lean on partners as eyes and ears, take small steps, and build as the picture changes, without over-constructing a plan for a moment that may not last.

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In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Kyle Tatum, Senior Channel Sales Manager at NordSecurity. Kyle leads new managed service provider recruitment for Nord and has been part of the channel program since its early days, giving him a first-hand view of how Nord scaled past a thousand partners while keeping the experience personal.

Kyle opens with what has made NordSecurity's channel program stand out as it has grown. Every new partner gets a free Not For Resale license to use internally, direct attention from a real person during the recruit phase, and a dedicated account manager as soon as they sell their first seat. No inbox roulette. Nord's alliance work follows the same integration-first mindset. The recent partnership with CrowdStrike started with two real integrations: an API-driven shutdown of secure access when CrowdStrike detects a threat, and a SIEM integration in progress. Marketing then follows from the actual substance.

From there, the conversation turns to consumer brand equity as a channel tool. NordVPN is a globally recognized brand, and Kyle treats it as an icebreaker. Even when partners initially assume Nord is a consumer-only company, that opens the door to demonstrating what the enterprise stack actually delivers. Kyle draws a parallel to how Nike broke into skateboarding through one credible product moment. On AI, Kyle is thoughtful. Managed service provider requests are moving toward Model Context Protocol integrations that let them manage products through Claude or ChatGPT. Nord has already shipped that for Nordstellar and is bringing it to other products.

Kyle closes on a piece of practical wisdom that grounds the whole conversation. Don't get caught up in the hype cycle. Vendor conversations, real integrations, and real relationships are what shape lasting channel partnerships. People buy from people they like.
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In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Evgenia Ostrovskaya, Director of Channel Sales for EMEA Digital at Johnson Controls. With more than 25 years across software development, product, customer success, marketing, and sales, Evgenia brings a full-lifecycle view of what makes channel programs work in the smart and intelligent buildings space.

Evgenia opens with a mindset she brings to every partner conversation: partners function as an extension of every process inside the vendor organization. Marketing, sales, support, delivery, training. If a team does not fully understand its own internal processes, it cannot help partners scale them either. That is why she puts so much emphasis on qualification and delivery readiness. Scaling the process means investing in quality before adding partners, and pacing yourself when the platform is still finding product-market fit. Empathy for friction, especially in the early days of any new offering, is what separates channel programs that scale from those that stall.

From there, the conversation moves into how the channel for smart and intelligent buildings has evolved. The shift from product install to full lifecycle service management changes everything about how partners deliver, from initial setup to ongoing customer value and recurring revenue. Siloed systems have given way to open, interoperable platforms and ecosystems, which means partners with integration capabilities are the ones pulling ahead. Cyber security has moved from a future concern to a gating function today. Evgenia frames the strongest partners as those investing in these capabilities alongside her, building the kind of value chain that keeps end customers coming back.

Evgenia closes on the formula she keeps coming back to. Companies exist to solve customer problems better than others. Channel teams exist to help partners do the same. When both sides invest in the outcomes their customers actually want, everyone wins.
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Ep. 248 – David Turner, Distribution Leader for EMEA at Nutanix
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with David Turner, Distribution Leader for EMEA at Nutanix. With 26 years in the industry, split between distribution and vendor roles, David brings a rare view from both sides of the channel, and a clear sense of what actually makes partnerships work.
David opens with what's stayed constant across his career: channel leadership is a people business, built on trust, a clear vision, and mutual profitability. What's changed is the complexity of the landscape, as customers increasingly look for orchestrated solutions instead of straightforward fulfillment. That's where segmentation comes in. Nutanix invests deeply in its strategic partners while working closely with distributors to spot the partners on the rise, especially in emerging areas like containers and generative AI. David is equally open about how much Nutanix leans on its partners' hard-won customer relationships, describing the philosophy simply: "we're borrowing the relationship," and treating it with real care.
David also explores what it takes to lead across EMEA, embracing the unique character of each market it contains. Nutanix keeps its core program and value proposition consistent everywhere, then gives each region room to shape its own mix of partner types and commercial terms, whether that means system integrators, traditional resellers, or service providers. That same philosophy of choice carries into Nutanix's go-to-market: partners can build on the hardware, hypervisor, or cloud environment their customers already prefer, and can operate as both reseller and service provider at once, so the answer to "can you support this?" is almost always yes.
Looking ahead, David sees distributors moving beyond fulfillment into transformation: orchestrating partner networks, sharing data, and enabling growth at scale. It's a shift that keeps the whole ecosystem, and its trusted relationships, moving forward together.
Key takeaways:
Trust and Profitability Anchor Great Channel Leadership. David points to two things that never change in channel leadership: genuine trust between people, and a shared focus on mutual profitability. The strongest leaders walk the walk, standing behind what they say and staying laser focused on making sure everyone understands their role and their share of the profit pool.
Borrowing the Relationship, and Protecting It Like Your Own. David describes Nutanix's channel model simply: partners bring 20 to 30 years of customer relationships to the table, and Nutanix sees itself as borrowing that trust, not owning it. That means treating every partner-held relationship with real care, since the end customer belongs to the partner, not the vendor.
Segmentation Creates Room for Both Scale and Discovery. David treats segmentation as the tool that makes room for both strategic, established partners and the ones just coming into their own. Deep investment goes to the large relationships that already know Nutanix's playbook, while distributors help identify partners on the rise in newer spaces like containers and generative AI.
One Program, Many Markets: Consistency Meets Local Nuance. EMEA covers a huge range of mature and high-growth markets, and David embraces just how different they are. Nutanix keeps its core program and value proposition consistent everywhere, then lets each region choose its own mix of partner types, from system integrators to service providers, and adjust commercial terms where needed.
Distribution Is Moving From Fulfillment to Transformation. David sees the distributor role evolving well beyond order processing into orchestrating the wider partner network. That means putting data to work, scaling enablement and training, and helping partners pivot toward new consumption models, positioning distribution as a genuine growth engine for the next few years.

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