Mike Stocker: Scaling Smarter with 7,000+ Partners at CallRail

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Request. Okay, we are back, and here we are now. Today, we're for this session. We're in the actual super node space here. The keynote is right next door. People are walking around going to sessions, and I am excited to be here with Mike stocker, Mike, welcome, yeah, thank you. Hey. Nice to see you. Chip Yeah. So Mike is VP of partnerships at CallRail, and CallRail is a an AI based call tracking system for, you know, managing calls. And you tell me, but yeah, so Mike runs all partnerships for CallRail. So welcome Mike.

Mike Stocker 0:39  
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so I just joined CallRail about three months ago as the VP of partnerships. CallRail is a call tracking platform that you mentioned, leverages AI as well, and so we have hundreds of 1000s of customers. We have 7000 agency partners that we work with to help give that power of call tracking and democratize that and allow companies to actually have an understanding of who is calling into their business, and then giving them the sentiment of what is like, what are those calls? What are they talking about? What are the keywords, what's the How are the customers feeling? And then being able to take that data and feed that into some of our partner platforms so that you can optimize things like your marketing ad spend and other areas. And so we've got something like 60 integration partners, tons agency partners. So it's quite a robust business. I've been really happy to join.

Chip Rodgers  1:29  
Yeah, that's exciting. So sick. You said 60 integration partners. So you have a lot of a lot going on there with and I can understand that you're it seems like your technology could be embedded, you know, right, into a lot of different kinds of solutions.

Mike Stocker  1:43  
Yeah, that's right chip. So we have, so I run all the partnerships. We have a couple of different pillars. So we've got strategic technology partners. So think of the CRMs in the world, so Salesforce and HubSpot and others that are major partners for us. We've got our ecosystem partners that are kind of those companies that we build integrations to that might provide additional functionality and product capabilities. And then we have the large agency partner program. And so one of the areas that we look at is the strategic partnerships, and how do we potentially take our technology and put it into other systems that are complementary, right? And so we partner with a number of vertical, specific CRMs or marketing automation platforms. So think of like Clio or lawmatics or one of these in the legal space. They're legal CRM or legal platforms, and then CallRail actually integrates with those companies to provide call tracking services within their platforms, or available with as an integration with those platforms. Interesting.

Chip Rodgers  2:43  
So, so tell me you, you talked about several different kinds of partners, agency partners and integration partners. What is the if you can, sort of, and we talked talking a little bit about it already, but what is the partnering strategy for, for call rail, if you can, if you can, kind of, if there's a way to sort of wrap that together.

Mike Stocker  3:02  
Yeah, I think that's a great, great question. So we, we started life as a product led growth company. So it's a free trial that leads into, you know, paid subscription, and the company grew very successfully. But I would actually now say, and I'm talking about in my session tomorrow, that we are now plg squared, which is product led and partner led growth. So we have the strategy of the strategic the tech partners, but we also have a very large presence with agency partners. I mentioned this earlier, but 7000 agency partners that we work with. That's the size of hub spots agency program. So this company, CallRail, that many of you may not have heard of, we have an agency program that's that large and that drives something like 40% of our total revenue. So we talk about, you know, we are partner led growth, for sure, and then, you know, we're on a path towards ecosystem led growth, which is what all of this is about here, this time at supernode. And what I would say when we get to that is we'll actually be driving partner source deal flow, and that coming from technology integrations and strategic partnerships, which is a little harder, but we're on that path, and once we have that contributing, plus the agency, plus, you know, everything the product led, growth that we've been doing, that is true, elg, that everyone's been talking about, because then we'll have all of those pieces and highly efficient growth also,

Chip Rodgers  4:19  
yeah, that's tremendous. So I mean, gosh, product, I mean partners from the beginning, and very deeply embedded into the culture and how you go to market. So that's, that's tremendous. Mike, talk a little bit about, and again, you're alluding to some of the things already. But what's the, what's the value that that CallRail gets from partnering, that your partners get from and ultimately, that your customers get from partnering.

Mike Stocker  4:46  
Yeah, yeah. Great question chip. So I actually did this in the partner podcast with Jared fuller about a week ago, but I talk about these four lenses that we should measure partnerships by, and so the four lenses are showing up. More in market through co marketing with partners. That's an easy one. Like even you can do that with any partner. You can do co marketing together, if you have a similar ICP, do you sell to the same people? And that is, there benefit from working together so showing up more in market. Second one is partner source, deal flow. Can they actually bring you deals? Can you help them grow their business? Is there some reciprocal flow of inbound referrals for your business, ways to grow your business. The third lens is product capability. So through an integration with a partner, do you have a more complete solution? Are you able to, like, sell a broader solution set? And then the last lens is through retention and renewal. Increased retention, renewal. And so we've actually heard a few of the speakers here today, and I think Bob even mentioned it. But like, if you have partner integrations in place, you become more sticky. And the more that your customers are using those your retention rate goes up. And so and you look at partnerships in that holistic regard, and you look at all four of those lenses, and each of your partners should be contributing on each of those points and those lenses, that's actually the value that, you know, CallRail gets through our partners. And then, you know, the partners benefit as well through similar lenses, right? We should be sending them deals. We should be doing co marketing that they show up in market. They should get product capabilities. They will get an awesome call tracking platform, you know, this kind of thing. And so it's reciprocal, those lenses that I talk about,

Chip Rodgers  6:23  
that's That's awesome, that's fantastic. Well, Mike, this is been fantastic. And really appreciate you taking a few minutes with us and just talking about the things that are really tremendous things that are happening at call rail and, you know, we, we were together at, I think, super node last year, and then we got catalyst ecosystem, as we did a, yep, we did an ACES so and

Mike Stocker  6:51  
thanks so much super node. This is awesome. Love being here with all these other partner execs. It's, it's really fun. Everyone should come to supernode come next year, if you're not here this year, but it's good times.

Chip Rodgers  7:03  
Fantastic. Thanks, Mike, and thank you all for joining in, and we'll see you shortly. I'm going to be talking again in just a couple minutes. So yeah, thanks, Mike, cool. I hope

Mike Stocker  7:14  
that was okay. You.

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