Jeffrey Roth: Building Trust-Driven Partnerships at Avalara

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Yeah, okay, here we go. We're back again. Chip Rodgers, CMO at works band, and we're here at crossbeam supernode. People are gathering. We got little groups of activity happening behind us. And there's a welcome reception tonight. And I am really excited to be joined right now with by Jeff Roth, Jeff welcome chip. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. So Jeff runs partnering. Is VP of strategic alliances for Avalara, and you have a team of about 40 partner people. Yeah,

Jeffrey Roth  0:36  
we're aligned to all sorts of referral partners. We work on strategies to help them identify opportunities for Avalara, who in their in their sphere, might be a good fit, customers, prospects. We're all about Tax Automation at Avalara, saving time, money and surprises from government authorities and yeah. So we are, we are here to help our our partners, help their customers and make a little money along the way.

Chip Rodgers  1:10  
No one likes a tax surprise, no,

Jeffrey Roth  1:15  
we find that tax audits are just not really liked by anybody. So if we can help our customers avoid those kinds of horrible surprises, we're happy to do that.

Chip Rodgers  1:27  
That's true. That's terrific. So, so, so tell me, Jeff, let's start sort of at the at the top level. Talk about the partnering strategy for Avalara, you have a ton of partners, like your whole market is really with with partners. So talk, tell me a little bit

Jeffrey Roth  1:43  
about that. You know, Scott McFarland, our CEO, will tell you that partners are everything to Avalara. We have built the company with our partners. Partners mean different kinds of things at Avalara, we have technology partners, and my team only deals with technology partners that actually refer business to us. We have a whole business development team that looks for new partnering opportunities where our tax engine and the partners product, their platform or application can be integrated to calculate tax for their customers. My team is more aligned to accounting firms, SI systems integrators, vars e commerce agencies, anybody who has customers that generate invoices where there is a possibility of tax being calculated. We help them automate that, and we're integrated with, I think now it's over 1200 different kinds of applications. So we we have all sorts of opportunities for our partners and their customers.

Chip Rodgers  2:56  
So that's amazing. How do you, how do you and your partners? How do you help your partners sort of keep track of all that with so many integrations, so many opportunities to connect, and

Jeffrey Roth  3:07  
really all about enablement chip and and keeping on top of what the various governmental changes are. You know, in the United States, every every state has their own kinds of laws and changes. So we stay on top of that. We educate our partners, we give them talk tracks, how to look out for opportunities. Help them fill their pipeline. It's all about the partners making themselves stickier and more important to their customers, always moving into more of a trusted advisor kind of role. So anything we can do to help them with that, you know, we're we're more than happy to do so. We also have international partners. There's all sorts of other taxes around the world, beyond us, sales taxes that that we are happy to help our partners and their customers comply with we also in the United States have specialty taxes. There are taxes like oil and gas excise taxes or tobacco excise taxes. There are streaming taxes. There are beverage alcohol taxes, lodging taxes, so you name it, and Avalara has either created, or perhaps, in some cases, purchased, an entity that has that kind of offering. And we, we have incorporated that into all the things that we want to share with our partners so they can provide the most value to their customers,

Chip Rodgers  4:38  
you know. So one of the things that I love talking about is the IS, and wanted to talk with you about, is the sort of the joint value proposition, how, what's the value to of partnering with, to for Avalara, for your partners, and for and ultimately, for a customer. You're already talking about some of these things, right?

Jeffrey Roth  4:55  
We are the, I mean, the value is, is how we help our partners. And and for us, the value is knowing that partner opportunities typically convert into an opportunity at a higher rate. There's usually a higher ASP. These are the kinds of things that Avalara knows are going to help our business. And more, more than that, the partners have been doing business with these customers, typically, you know, for decades, and in many cases, so they bring a lot of tribal knowledge about the customer, who's a who's a champion, who's a detractor, what kinds of things will work for that customer and what, what, what products of ours might not be the best fit? So listening to them really helps our sales team hone in on where we can provide the most value in Avalara products and services without having to, you know, kind of look at a blank piece of paper. So the partners really are incredible at adding value to us every day. So we're real big on more partner opportunities, the better.

Chip Rodgers  6:04  
That's terrific. So I mean, it sounds like, you know, you've, you've been through this journey, and your sales team like, you don't really even have an issue like convincing the sales team to work with partners. They're like, let me

Jeffrey Roth  6:16  
you know, when I walked in the door at Avalara about five years ago, there were some naysayers on the sales team, but I think slowly but surely, we have shown the sales executives the sales leadership at Avalara, the value of partners and and for me, I was a partner before I came to Avalara. So one of the reasons I think I bring an interesting perspective is that, you know, when we talk about our partners, to me, it's more than just a name or you know what our target revenue for a year might be. It's really understanding the partners business model, how Avalara fits into that. You know how we can help a partner what we call develop an Avalara practice? You know where they are making Avalara more strategic and not opportunistic, you know, not responding just to hand raisers, but incorporating Avalara products into their initial sale, into the initial conversation with their prospects. And that can be very powerful. And in the last couple of years, we have trained partners and certified them on Avalara solutions, and they can do their own implementations and provide, in some cases, first line support, and that creates more revenue for our partners, which they love, and our partners like it, because the customers typically get a great experience. They're used to dealing with their partners. They know what to expect. The partners know the level of service to deliver to their customers oftentimes better than Avalara even knows. So we find that our net promoter scores go up when partners are involved on the services side. So it's just, it's win, win, win.

Chip Rodgers  7:53  
That's fantastic. Yeah, that's incredible. What a great what a great partnering story. Yeah. So Jeff, this has been fantastic. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Any any word of advice you'd have you know, you've you've been in partnering with on

Jeffrey Roth  8:09  
both sides for, for a while, decades. My advice is, go slow. Be strategic in who you want to partner with. Trust is the most important thing. Don't expect miracles overnight and and understand your partner's business model and how you can help them always more important than what we have to sell them and their customers. So those are my little you know, bits of advice. Hopefully that's helpful. Those

Chip Rodgers  8:37  
are some great ones. Wow. I mean, go slow. Make sure you're not going too fast. Partner with the with the with the right with the right partners. Build trust. Build trust. Those are, those are keys to understand their value props, their business,

Jeffrey Roth  8:51  
business model, right? Their business model is important to them more so than what we might have to offer. So the more we understand that and help them achieve their goals, the better it will be for us, because we're going to play into that. And I guess the last thing is, every partner is different. We can have a strategy, you know, for all partners, but typically that always isn't going to work. We have to tweak it, adjust it, and make sure we're providing the right value to each partner. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  9:22  
fantastic, Jeff, thank you so much. This has been terrific. Really appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, glad to do it. And thank you all for joining. And you know, if you're not at supernode, why not? You should be all right, thanks everybody. You.

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