Grappling With Partners

By: Jim Misuraca As a follow-up to Chris’ blog post on 5 Tools for Better Alliance Partnerships where Chris positioned it from the ISV perspective, I’m going to provide the perspective of the large enterprise software company. While there are several enterprise software companies that many ISVs partner with – SAP, IBM, Tealium, Marketo, Domo, Pega, etc. -- three stand out as the primary targets for most ISVs looking to increase awareness of their solution and grow revenue – Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce (a.k.a the Big Three).   In full disclosure, I worked for Oracle Marketing Cloud for almost five years building their ISV partner ecosystem. In addition, I currently work for Decibel – a digital experience intelligence platform that is a Premier partner in the Adobe Exchange Program.   If you’re one of the ~6,800 ISVs in Scott Brinker’s latest MarTech graphic , chances are you’re in a defined market with defined competitors. The more competitors in your space,...

This week’s entry is going to be a two-part piece that will explore Alliance Partnerships from the perspectives of both the upstart ISV (independent software vendor) as well as from that of the partner team on the Alliance side.  I’ll be tackling the ISV perspective with all of my usual grappling analogies and then I’ll be joined by my friend Jim Misuraca, formerly the Senior Director of Alliances and Channels at Oracle Marketing Cloud, who can talk about what it takes to break away from the pack when trying to achieve any level of notoriety and success with a company that has thousands of other ISVs, agencies, and other services providers all vying for their attention.   After wrapping up our Friday night comp class a couple of weeks ago our head instructor, Professor Ethan Snow, took a few minutes to share some knowledge that I thought particularly applicable to the discussion on how ISVs should engage with 800-pound gorilla Alliance Partners with whom we al...

Originally, I was going to use this week’s column to dive into some of the strategies and tactics surrounding Alliance Partners but then inspiration hit in the form of one of my favorite podcasts, “Hidden Brain.”   Last week’s episode focused on the concept of “rebel talent” and how nonconforming behaviors, when executed properly, and with sincerity of purpose, can lead to some incredible outcomes.   As I was listening to the discussion, I started to think about this concept both in terms of BJJ and partnerships and it struck me just how important this concept is to grow in both disciplines.   In BJJ, the innovators on the mats are those that didn’t conform to the rules that were set before them but who decided to take the foundation of knowledge they’d gained from their instructors and adapt that knowledge in a way that broke the rules and changed the dynamic of the way they engaged with their opponents.   Indeed, it was just such a rule-breaking...