Driving Partner-Led Growth with Rob Moyer (Bluethread.io)

The number one thing that drives performance is intelligence. And the second things are like things like grit and ability to get it done. The barrier to educating people on why partner led that they just like, Hmm, we wanna be the next Microsoft, Google, or AWS, but we wanna do it the way we do it, which is not the way they did it.

According to Canis, like over 70% of it spend is done through partners. And so like whenever I hear this space, the go-to market space, I'm always like just fascinated by like, oh, this is a trend. No, it's not a trend. If you can't get off the ground today with this level of ai, what makes you think you're gonna get off the ground in two years when it's 10 x better?

Today's guest is Rob Moyer, a seasoned partnerships leader who's built and scaled partner ecosystems across Microsoft Cloud marketplaces and Gong. Rob has operated on both sides of the business enterprise and startup and brings a rare perspective on what actually makes partner-led growth work. Today he runs Blue Thread where he advises companies on modern partnership strategy, revenue intelligence.

And go to market alignment. If you're building partnerships, scaling GTM or figuring out how AI and automation change the way we grow, this is a conversation you don't want to miss.

Alright, Hey everyone. We've got another episode of IQ Squared, uh, and we've got a very, very special guest, uh, Mr. Rob Moyer. A little bit of background in history.

I met Rob when he just started rolling up the Gong partnership without. Saying too much. Um, and we actually kicked off our, you know, more of a professional relationship there and it kind of morphed into this mentor mentee, uh, evolution. But before I kinda really overstep the introduction here, I want to kind of pass it off to you, Rob, and, and why don't you tell all the listeners out there who you are, what you've done, and.

Where you're at today. Thanks. Well, first of all, I have to do a shout out to Kobe background, like, uh, as a Lakers fan first. I love that. Um, so a little bit about myself. Yeah, I mean, I think kind of like, uh, in this world, you know, did a great job of getting gong partnerships off the ground, but, you know, I go much further back than that.

You know, I, I've kind of had this nice career that, uh, I'm one, I think I'm one of the few people in, in SaaS who has both done like that big enterprise. I worked at Microsoft, I ran distribution. Um, I built a nice business at Cenex Cloud Marketplace. I kind of came from that Google. Microsoft AWS sphere of influence.

And then when I went to Gong, it was just eye-opening. You know, I literally failed for the first six months, but that'll be a story for today. Uh, and then currently after we got it going, I started up my own agency called Blue Thread, and we're really a partnership advisory company that focuses on, you know, both early and enterprise, kind of bringing that modern partnership framework.

Into the current business. 'cause that learning from Gong was really all about the evolution of revenue intelligence. I kind of feel like I'm bringing that to the partnership side. And, and what's what's interesting is like, I didn't know you worked at Microsoft until we were at dinner, at the Microsoft Ignite Conference because all of your colleagues who are like fan boys of, of, of you, Rob, were like, oh yeah, I, I met Rob at Microsoft.

So that one is really. Insightful and the fact that you spend like almost four years at Synex, uh, you know, you, you've kind of gone through the trade of very large, large, large enterprises, but having to do a little more of that, you know, innovative, creative, breakthrough ability of creating these, these partnership motions or these channel motions, how did that actually provide, you know, strengths or weaknesses when you actually got into Gong?

Right? Because it's, you know, gong's a little more of a startup, even though it's. Significant revenue. I think you guys just surpassed 300 million. But was that looked upon in a nice way or did you understand the way to kind of navigate the inner levels of startup by mapping it to your experiences with Enterprise?

Yeah, you know what, I wanna help break a myth on this. 'cause personally I felt like it was tough that first six months because anytime you go into a startup, they're wary of the big company guy or gal. And you know what, what I found in, in my career. The same attributes you need to be successful in enterprise and startups are the same things like grit, uh, the ability to move quickly and make your own business.

Uh, but I think there's kind of this bias on both sides. The enterprise people going, well, the startup people organized, and then the startup people with big company, you know, it's like they're too strategy focused. They're not on execution. And I'm like. Mm. I think that's a very shallow way of approaching it.

You have to look at, you know, the number one thing that drives performance is intelligence. And the second things are like things like grit and ability to get it done. It's funny that you say that. I did, I did struggle the first six months only 'cause we were in a new space. You know, rev ops was new. You know, rev ops is everywhere now, but you know, if you go back three years ago, there's not many rev ops people out there.

It's like. The thing about LinkedIn and the internet is, uh, waves move faster. And Rev ops, you know, it's really a different version of sales. The one sophistication. Go ahead. The one interesting thing about, of what, what you kind of said that myth, uh, which is really interesting because like we, we think about it all the time.

Like I, I came from Intel, we started in the startups. We hired a few kind of enterprise folks and the idea is like they're coming in with a big desk, right? Are they actually gonna get gritty and in the trenches? Uh, and I like to say, and I'd like to support you on that, not to just pump you up, is you, you do get in the trenches, right?

It's a very unique situation to actually identify somebody who actually comes in with a lot of experience and kinda make that happen. So, you know, I'm curious, when it came to the Gong environment, did you bring in any of the hold. Personnel and or friendships or colleagues from your older companies into kind of that, that new world of gong.

You know, I didn't do too much 'cause of the crossover back office, front office. But you know, the other little known fact is I was a buyer, so I took more of that mentality. I think where it really clicked is my die on the hill moment, was that we were gonna go down a marketplace strategy, and that's where I brought my background.

It wasn't necessarily I brought people, I brought my whole notion that. For SaaS companies that are, you know, sub billion, just the way the enterprise buyer works, whether it's AWS, Microsoft or Google, those marketplaces are an accelerator to your business. You know, a lot of companies that, that are early stages, so focused on partner source, but, uh, you know, I, I think about the Microsoft experience.

We never had that. They were partner led from day one. I Balmer used to go developers, developers, developers. You know, that was the charge of people making money off you is the way to build your business. So it's kind of weird when I came. Towards Startup Line. I already had a partner led focus, and I think my biggest surprise was that startups didn't, and yet they were chasing the companies that have partner led motions.

It's kind of ironic in my my mind that that, 'cause, you know, you're, you're small, you have to go direct, but the barrier to educating people on why partner led. They just like, Hmm, we wanna be the next Microsoft, Google, or AWS, but we wanna do it the way we do it, which is not the way they did it. Yeah. And then it, it brings up another good point because I think it's notoriously known if there's a partner motion within a startup, I think nine outta 10 times leadership is always like, oh, it's gonna be a, a force multiplier.

Let's hire one person. And they're gonna make it happen, right? Um, and typically I think there's a lack of alignment across management to what that partner motion starts up with. So how do you work through getting that type of buy-in internally to say, Hey, this is actually a full go-to market motion and it's a foundational element that needs to be supported by everyone in go to market or everyone within this, this company to make it work.

Yeah, I think, uh, my, my little way of doing it was, uh, take metrics they already measure and show how partner makes it better. So, for example, win rates. I've done this at multiple companies. When you break down, when partners are involved in a source or co-sell, the win rate goes up. And so you try to use the data that they use to run their business with this nuance of like, well look at these.

Average deal size goes up, win rates go up. You know, I think the big fallacy is to your point, they'll hire one person, call 'em a cost center, and then if they're successful, they just wanna raise their quota versus going, no, it's revenue per employee. Like they use different metrics. So like when you have an AE.

Depending on the level, you have an expected outcome of an SDR ae. And to scale, you add more to the thing. We're in partnerships a lot of time. If you're successful, they're just going, we have bigger targets. It's still the same math. You need more people to get better results. You just gotta ground it in data that's irrefutable and drives kind of the same outcomes for the organization.

Yeah. And, and so I guess to, to put it into something tangible, I think a lot of the listeners that would be kind of tuning in or sub 10 million in a RR, right? Yeah. You know, later they've gone direct that they're showing some traction they might have. Okay. You know, GRR or net retention and it could be better.

And leadership's thinking about a partner motion, what would you recommend to the business? And I know it's gonna be case by case, depending on the business, the segment, and what they're doing. But as a general broad strobe, what would be the metric? That they should evaluate a partner motion on when initially starting it out and building the ecosystem?

Well, I think there's a couple things. Um, I, I would literally get so tactical as like, as you're like account mapping and as you're kind of like building out the go-to. I'll give you one example, like private equity, uh, because we were talking about this recently, you and I. People kind of go, well, that's a great, great market, but how do I start?

Well, it could be as simple as pick a private equity that has good overlap using kind of your data sources to understand like who's what portfolio companies are with this private equity. Take one of your AEs. Give them their whole account base. So like if you had an AE that their whole territory is built off the portfolio of one that you're going after, then drive this motion and, and it's like, what you'll find is if you start winning, you have your self-referrals, you start winning, you go to that private equity firm and you start recommending like, Hey, we noticed like 20% of your portfolio uses us.

Here's what the benefit they're seeing. It gives you a different way to use your SDR and AE in that motion. It's still very partner friendly. The point is, is I'm telling you, think out of the box. Everybody's thinking like you're either on the partnership team or you're on the direct team, and there's cases that you can be both.

It's just emotion that's, that's built to win. It's like a pod, so I use that as an example, but there's many others like that. It's like getting people to think like it's not, it's not either or it's, and yeah, it's a very strategic play and I think. If anybody's out there thinking about potentially hiring or starting a, a partner motion one, talk to Rob.

But number two, I think when they're looking at that person they're trying to hire, I would very shy away from the person who's just like, oh, like I need to get pipeline and I need to get pipeline. They need to think strategically on what does my business currently need, or the company that you work for, and what does that other company need?

Where do we see them growing and where do we see ourselves growing and how can we potentially add any type of synergy? Right? So for us, I think at Lead iq, we're a fairly newer partner. Motion, right? Our first real partner was with you, uh, when you were at Gong. Right? So shut out to, to Rob when he started up the, the partner ecosystem.

Lead IQ was probably one of the, the first few partners, correct me if I'm wrong there, but what the first to kind of right reach seven figures within, uh, you know, a 12 month basis, which was very, very amazing. But when I look at kind of how, how we build it out, it, I think, you know, we look at it very simply is like, what does the product integration look like If there is any type of product integration to provide additional value to our customer.

Right or potential prospects. Is there a potential to co-sell and resell, which makes it easier for the customer to acquire both, or there's an immense value add or there's a, a reaction to some something competitive. And can we get alignment from like a thought leadership perspective to where management can sit across the table from each other and innovate and brainstorm on net new ideas?

Right. And I think the reason why this is important is sometimes there's disconnect from a partner team to the management or company strategy that we, we typically see, and I know it's a very nuanced, like broad tro Rob, but like, is that, uh, an agreeable framework that you would approach on anybody who would be just starting out?

Absolutely, and, and I, I'd even add one layer. I think one of my learnings that I told people is you never know where. A great partner will come from like much like anything else, we make assumptions going in and that's why I like having like, you know, a TAM analysis, who's the buyer persona? Like that's where we matched up really well.

Um, and it was a great learning for everyone. It's like, you know, when you break out a business news, especially like in this co-sell world, it's like you can account match. That means nothing. If you have the right buyer persona and account match, that's where the magic happens because you know for an AE or CSM, when they're working with that other partner, if it's too much of a heavy lift, they're out.

And then it's up to the partner manager. But if there's like this, oh, we're already talked in this group, we'll, we'll win together. That mentality tends to close deals much faster. Um, so it's like those little extra details that you do in the prep and in the early days that understand if where's the unlock in this relationship?

Yeah, and I, and I think it goes into the harder question is like. Let's say you ink that partner deal, it makes a lot of sense. There's excitement on both ends. I think the harder part is enablement, right? How do you get your field team or your boots on ground to actually start thinking about, oh, this could be a great partner opportunity.

And through that process, I think it's forever a battle, but. How would you, uh, approach that? You know, I, I've had to do this many times, many companies, um, it's, it's no different than direct selling. Internally, you gotta find sponsors, go find that champion. I typically try to go after high performing AEs because they had more influence, and then I would like.

Win with 'em and then cascade that message out. There's there, it's like, much like in partner world, there's nothing like referrals. Uh, in the AE world. There's nothing like a, uh, ae telling another ae, Hey, this is a great solution. You gotta work together. That's so like, that, that's like basic sales 1 0 1, but it's, it's underappreciated.

Underused to like be that specific everybody's trying to solve like. I hate to say it this way, but trying to solve like boil the ocean or world hunger on enablement now. Like focus on who can actually do the next thing you need. And when you get two or three of 'em, then you can get to five or 10 of 'em.

'cause you can do a webinar and it's kind of like open, cold email rate and it's like one person in the audience out of 10. Even remotely paying attention on enablement. Like, and I know I'm cynical here, but I think, uh, we all have faced that, that one, well, what, what, what I love about your answer, it's not, oh, like go to leadership and have leadership kind of punt it down.

It's very realistic, right? Like you're a hundred percent right. My eyes, you know, gloss over, and I probably shouldn't admit this, but. A quick enablement meeting means that's time for me to catch up on emails and slacks. Right? But if you're in the face and you're working with an AE to say, Hey, these, this is why the benefits are, it'll help you sell more of your existing product, you know, to the AMS or the CSMs, it'll help you on your renewal or potential expansion.

I think that's when they see something a little more tangible and they're. Kind of ready to kick in and move forward. Um, well, you know, and, and, and it, it's funny how, uh, I, I have a real story for you around lead IQ because if you remember when you showed me your chrome brow, like you just did a five minute explanation and then you helped me put the lead IQ Chrome browser extension on.

So when I logged into LinkedIn, that five minutes was probably more than the hour enablement that I went through. Back in the day, 'cause you literally did this hands-on, like here's how you use it. And it was like the, uh, the aha moment is I still have the lead IQ icon, uh, next to my Chrome. So, uh, they just tell you like how people, you know, just get one or two at a time and then I cascade, I've told that to three or four people already.

Yeah. And it's, and it's repetition consistently. It's like, how many times can I try to help you with even the basics, right? I you're a hundred percent right. It's like remove the, uh, the assumptions associated with how people are looking at your product, the values associated with it. 'cause we're our biggest hype men.

But I think you have to be cynical to understand, okay, I gotta repeat that process and I gotta move it forward. Thinking about this and kind of segueing into a kind of a newer conversation. I'm interested in, and maybe it's just because I'm in the partner world a little bit deeper now, but I'm interested in, in the idea of how many companies are trying to approach the industry with a partner led approach.

Right. Why do you think that's, that's changed? Or maybe it's always been like this, but in my opinion, it seems like over the past 18, even to 24 months. People are like partnerships is the only way to go and move forward as a a, a bet or a safety net as they continue to grow. So I'm gonna give you a little controversial take that will age me, but I feel like there's a little part of us, like we're in a little bit of a SAS bubble.

You know, we're both in the Bay Area and there's so much focus on AI and, but getting back to my original thesis, like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, once they hit a certain scaling mechanism, they really adopted partners. Because that is the way you grow. You know, over 70, according to Canis, like over 70% of it spend is done through partners.

And so like whenever I hear this space, the go to market space, I'm always like just fascinated by like, oh, this is a trend. No, it's not a trend. Maybe. A lot of companies are growing up to see like, oh, this is the way to go. You know, I've done a lot of benchmarking over the years. Like once you're, if you're under 500 million, you know, you have to be on the path to 35 to 40% of partner, uh, impacted business.

And so I think there's this natural. Path that's going on. So I don't think it's new. I just think it's, uh, more of a maturity model. But obviously I'm a advocate of, uh, start early. Yeah. And, and that was my next question is, is there a business that shouldn't start a partner motion? Yeah. Right. Is it, when is, uh, when is it too early for them to start it?

You know, that's a good question and I think there's nuance in the answer. Uh, I typically think it comes down to when you have salespeople in an ICP. It's not too early because there's a partner that sells 'em to that ICP who sells 'em to that persona that probably can accelerate one port part of your business.

It just becomes what is your model? You know, it depends on what the business model is to get there, but I find it fascinating that people won't go there, especially, you know, everything we read on LinkedIn. About SDRs and ai, SDRs and cold openings. Like, hmm, a warm opening might be a little better than a cold opening.

And I think that, um, I go through this exercise with many of my clients. It's like when you get the maniacally focused on the ICP and buyer, like start small. It could be one partner, it could be two partners. That's a great way to start when you're that small. Yeah, and I love it. 'cause basically what you're saying is like, you know, cold outbound, like we've got all these tools coming out for full automation, full replacement.

But what you're really saying is like, what are they actually trying to tap on? And, and it's just connecting you with potential prospects or customers. And the easiest path, probably the warmest paths to do that is via partners, because word of mouth is, is strong in the SaaS industry or even this technology or just even in, in business alone.

If somebody's like, Hey, you should probably talk to this person. You're gonna think highly more about doing that versus, uh, getting an email through your inbox or getting a random text or phone call. That's, that's the, the beauty in it. So I like that. You have a icp. Let's kick it in. Yeah. Exactly. And you know, I'm gonna ask the hard question here too, because I know you're, you're very in relationships with a lot of software.

It's a lot of, uh, ISV companies. You've got GSIs in your Rolodex, you've got your disses, you've got your hyperscalers. Like I think, you know, everybody under the sun at this moment, especially Bay Area, around the world. When you look at what's happening in the industry. And again, we call Silicon Valley a nice little echo chamber of us loving ourselves.

But do you think this AI bubble is real, right? Are we in it? Are we in the thick of it? How would you estimate it if it does burst? And who gets impacted the most if you believe it will burst? I think we're in the early stages. Um, you know, I, I have the great. Experience of going through the first one. Um, you know, back 2000 when every restaurant in the Bay Area was hard to get a place to eat.

It was everything. What happened is that bubble blasted, but then you had all the emergence of all the great companies that we have today. So I think there's no different there. I think they'll definitely be winners and losers so that, you know, the way I define a bubble is slightly different. 'cause bubbles are, you know, and they burst.

There's nothing but bad. I just think it's, there's. Winners and losers that come out of a bubble and we go like, Hey, you just wanna be on the right side of that line. You know, you don't have to kill it, you just gotta be on the right side of the winners and losers. But I think we're still a few years away.

I think what we're seeing right now, and I I, we talked about this at this dinner I just hosted, uh, a lot of people are buying one year contracts 'cause a result of, they just. They just don't know how fast innovation's gonna be. And what I tell people is I go, I don't get as much hung up on the one year contract is, can you build up your processes to match the capabilities of ai?

You know, like if you notice everything I do, I redirect to the simple version because AI is gonna get better, which is gonna help us, but. If you can't get off the ground today with this level of ai, what makes you think you're gonna get off the ground in two years when it's 10 x better? So I'm answering it slightly different than a bubble.

It's more about how do you transform your company to take advantage of all this, uh, productivity. So what you're telling me is it's the right time to start building a business if you had the aspirations to build it. It's also the right time if you are interested in AI to lean in and learn it or purchase it, because at the end of the day, it's all, uh, an enablement path or an upgrade path.

Um, as it matures more and more. Um, oh yeah. I, I, I wanna give you a perfect example. I'll use myself, you know, here I'm, uh, the old guy starting a business, a lifestyle business. Yet, you know, I have a, I have my own tech stack that I can produce today. I can produce what three to five people would've, uh, just a few years ago.

You know, I have my Slack, my, my Google, my teams, uh, I have those integrations from HubSpot. I have lead IQ on my outbounding. Like I look at all these tools as a productivity hack to do something that would've taken hours. So, it's funny, just 'cause I'm a, a geek, I wanted to figure out this, this, like, how am I gonna outbound, you know, I have a pretty good business inbound.

You know, I write a lot on LinkedIn, so I get a lot of that, but I was like, I gotta believe in what I do. So I like to use the automation. So I put chat, chat, GPT in my Slack automation. I put HubSpot in my Slack automation in my email in, uh, as well. And then I'm doing an outbound, I'm taking my list from the lead IQ and I'm taking like my, my, uh, sales navigator and I'm just like.

Better targets, and it's like I've created my own automation. I wrote my scripts through ai. I built my kind of playbook so it won't be, you know, it won't get spam. I make it very customized and I'm like using lead IQ to kind like. Final mile at, even though I don't use the AI as much as I should, I'll, like, what I'll do is I'll cut and paste the beginning of the thing and let lead IQ make it better.

So that was a lot there. But like that's why I'm so excited. Like what I can do as an individual using all these tools is amazing. And I'm like, imagine when you get those workflows into a company, like a company of 20, 30, 40. Yeah, sky's the limit on protocol. I love it. Yeah. And, uh, a little quick preview.

Uh, we, we are almost done with our MCP, so we'll probably beta test that with you so you don't even have to get out of, uh, chat GPT to get more, more, more of your stuff done. So hopefully that should be good. I love it. Uh, you know, it's funny 'cause I think, you know, I think part of, um, in fairness, the people that are listening part of the discussion is when I came back to you about a month ago going, Hey, I'm implementing kind of like a modern workflow for partnerships.

That's one of the reasons I. I asked you to train me on lead IQ 'cause, and I said it a while back, but outbound is the number one skillset to keep your job whether you are an SDR ae and that's quarter of your job or in partnerships. And so like having that muscle and having tools that can speed up your job, uh, is super important.

So, you know, one of my things to do. Now, I'm not here to just make this a plug for Lead iq, but, uh, a, a plug for innovation partner teams need to outbound and use the tools that their counterparts on direct side are using to drive better results. And, and like that's the, I'm dying on in my consulting and that's the hell I'm dying on in all my round tables.

Oh, I love it. I love it. Uh, Rob, thank you so much. I know we've kind of hit and and maximized our time here, but I do appreciate all of the work, the expertise and the insights that you kind of gave us, not only in this call, but overall over the past few years and, and I, I'm sure continuing moving forward.

But for anybody who wants to pick your brain around partnerships. Around your experience or just, you know, naturally want to cold connect to see and, and keep you in the, in the, in, in their network, how can they reach you? What's a good email? Uh, it's very simple. rob@bluethread.io or find me on LinkedIn?

Yeah, we're, he's gonna have a LinkedIn like influencer badge right next to him fairly soon, so I'm pretty sure I know about that.

No, like LinkedIn knucklehead, but, uh, no, it's, it's a great network. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it, Rob. Thank you again. And uh, we'll, uh, I'm sure we'll chat very soon. Okay.