Mike Moore: From Brand to Partner and Back—Lessons in True Collaboration

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Yeah, all right, Hey everyone. It's day one still of partnership leaders, catalyst in Denver. And, you know, people are all behind us and walking around and checking things out. And it's been, it's been, so far, it's been a great start to the to the conference. Yeah, I think there's

Mike Moore  0:21  
supposed to be something like 700 people here. So fantastic to see so many partnership professionals here at a

Chip Rodgers  0:27  
conference. Yeah, fantastic. So I am so excited to be joined now by Mike Moore. Mike is VP of partnerships at productive edge, and we've known each other quite a little while now, many years that, gosh, you were at Microsoft for long time, and then we got to know each other when you were at avaritek, and any to open

Mike Moore  0:51  
took a turn over to the vendor side of things, and doing some things were complimentary to work span, I think, at the time. And, yeah, it's a fun to take that experience that I've gained through the course of my career as a vendor to turn it back and try to share that with channel people. But a couple years ago, I switched back to the practitioner side of things. So now at productive edge, I'm leading partnerships as a channel partner. Spent much of my career as a vendor and kind of on the brand side of things, but it's a lot of fun to be on the partner side of things right now. Yeah, so

Chip Rodgers  1:18  
tell us a little bit about productive edge and kind of the market that you guys are in, you're in, it's you're in healthcare and but so tell us a little bit about what the company's all

Mike Moore  1:27  
about. Yeah, for sure. So Chicago based system integration partner healthcare focused about 300 people on our staff delivering solutions primarily to the US healthcare audience, which, for those of the folks in the United States and certainly around the world, may know, the world may know the US healthcare system has a lot of problems, a lot of waste, and heard that. And so there's a lot of opportunity to apply technology to the problems of healthcare. And so we're a 15 year old company, but it's, it's very energetic, growth oriented, very mission driven, especially with what we're trying to do for

Chip Rodgers  1:58  
healthcare, that's great. So So partnerships, what tell us a little bit about how that you're, you're kind of, you've, you're creating the role and the and the function and and sort of getting attention around partnerships. What is that? What is that like? And what's, what is what? What is partnerships about? For productive?

Mike Moore  2:17  
Ed, yeah, I mean, in some ways, if anybody ever tells you that they're, they're hiring for a VP of partners, and it's a first of its kind role. You should be a little bit leery, you know, there, there are some lessons learned there that I'd be happy to share with anyone, not about productive edge, just life in general, right? Like it's all about expectations. So coming into this role about a year ago, I talked with the executive team about what their expectations were. So what did they want to get from partnerships. What were their hopes and what's the ramp time? Right? There's we all have hopes and dreams, but, you know, we all also have budgets and things that we have to look at. So a lot of the discussion when I first came in was about, what are the key partnerships that we want to develop? What do we expect to get from them? What's the time frame for that so that then I could build out a strategic plan as a team of one to go deliver on as much of that as I can, and so that's been my focus for the last year.

Chip Rodgers  3:06  
So so how has the switch been from the brand side to, you know, Channel, Channel and service server?

Mike Moore  3:14  
Yeah, so I started as a partner way back when I've been in the business for 29 years. I don't really feel old enough to say that, but it's true. So I've been doing partnerships for a long time. I think what made me successful on the brand side, especially my time at Microsoft, was having spent the first couple years as a channel partner and understanding what a brand was looking for from those partners in terms of what partners bring to the table. Turn that around on the brand side and think, how do I build programs to help channel partners be successful, knowing what they're looking for. And so now, yet again, I've flipped back to the partner side of things. And so as I go to work with Microsoft or Google or AWS or snowflake or Sitecore and the many companies that we work with at productive edge, I'm trying to always keep that mental mindset of what they're looking for. I have to represent our company and what we're trying to do to make sure we're getting what we need for our customers and our growth, but always trying to figure out, Where do we meet in the middle? How do we truly form a partnership where we can serve both of our needs in that relationship and not have it be one sided, just we don't have enough calories to burn as an organization the size that we are to just give, give, give. We have to get something in return. And that's a lot of the focus of the partnerships I work on.

Chip Rodgers  4:24  
Well, that's, I mean, that's really smart. That's, that's good just partnering in general, as understanding that you know the the goals and what are, what your partner is trying to achieve, and then, and then sort of mapping things to make sure that you have to hit your goals, but make sure that you understand how where those synergies are,

Mike Moore  4:41  
yeah, and I think that a lot of what partners want, you know, we want leads, right? We want leads from the brands. We want them to do all the great marketing that they do because they have the big name brands, they attract a lot of customer and prospect interest. We want leads. If you ask most brands what they want from their channel partners, they want leads and opportunities, and they want. You know, submit my dealer edge and right, use work span and send all your opportunities in, right, all that great stuff. Well, how do you know you could kind of sit there at an impasse if you're both wanting the same things, or you try to figure out, how do I give you something that has value to you, but then also ask for something in return? And so I spend a lot of time with our client directors who work in the sales function at productive edge, on that give and take. And how do we, if we're working with an account team at an enterprise account, give information that's helpful, help develop an opportunity, bring in that CO selling effort together, but then also make sure that we're getting something back for that, and that might be information about another customer or another group within that enterprise customer. So there's always got to be some sort of bi directional motion in each of these exchanges. And again, to me, that's really a foundational principle for partnership, whether you're on the brand or the partner side of things,

Chip Rodgers  5:47  
how is it going? I mean, because a lot of times it could be a cultural change. I mean, what's the people receptive and leaning in and excited about it? Or are you, are you finding

Mike Moore  5:57  
it? Yeah, so that is one of those things that, as I say, if you're looking at a first of its kind partnership role, and they're hiring for the first time, it's always good to kind of qualify why now and what's what's happening. I couldn't be happier with the leadership team at productive edge and kind of the decision that we've made to invest around partnerships, partnering was already in the DNA of the leadership team and the company we work with so much partner technology and what we build for our customers, that it came naturally to kind of put some focus and investment into this. They've been very collaborative, and I've enjoyed the work with them. You know, in other situations in my career, you know, it hasn't been all rosy. There's been some friction and challenges, mostly around alignment of expectations and time frame. And so I take those lessons forward me into this role, and, you know, try to obviously shape things up in a most beneficial way I can here. Yeah.

Chip Rodgers  6:46  
Oh, so Mike, one of the things that we were talked about, you know, maybe, you know, chatting about, is that I think is always a challenge, and something that partner folks are looking, you know, for help on is, how do you, how do you, how do you demonstrate the value of the partnership, you know, role within the organization, and, you know, it's a brand new, brand new role, and kind of getting the wheels, you know, turning. And how are you thinking about that? How are you sort of conveying the value? Yeah, I think the,

Mike Moore  7:19  
I think maybe teach, don't preach, or something like that could be a catchy line. So I take for granted a lot of things that I've learned in my career, because it's just human nature to me and partnering. I think, you know, I'm optimistic by nature. I'm trusting by nature, right? I want to give with no expectation of receiving something in return, right? You hope to earn it, right? But, but I think that's a mindset that not everyone shares, right? So what I try to do is teach the team and explain not just what we're going to do, but why. What is the strategy behind it? What has been my experience previously? What do I hope that we can gain from that? And then try to help them get where I am so I may be at the end of the decision or where we should go on an initiative. The rest of the team may not have that same experience. They may have had bad experiences with partners in the past and not be as trusting and those kind of things. So I always think, you know, checking in with the team about things, helping them get to where I am, and making sure that I'm leaving time for questions, versus just springing something on them and telling them we're doing something right, like make it more collaborative, to give them an opportunity to provide input and gaining that support, to take the initiative forward.

Chip Rodgers  8:26  
Fantastic, Mike, thank you for sharing a few thoughts here, and we'll let you get back back to the event. I think the welcome reception is coming up here, which is always a good, good time to connect with people and and have a good have a good event this week. Thanks, Chip I appreciate it. And thank you all for joining and for Mike Moore. Chip Rodgers, thanks for being here and see you. I've got a bunch of interviews tomorrow that I'll be sharing as well. So thanks everybody. You.

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