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The Enthusiasm Tells a Story – Meshach’s Insight into Mentoring

Absolutely” is Meshach’s favourite word, as he is enthused about the product and is passionate about the company and the team. 

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“As partners may be working with your competitors, are not on your payroll, and they may have their own products to sell, the portal has to be engaging and partners need to see value in order to drive them back. Engagement is key.” 

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Meshach’s background has been in helping companies penetrate, and be successful, in the European technology market. As such, understanding the value partner programs bring and the scale they provide. However, he states that “Channel” per se isn’t something we learn about at school and historically it has not been seen as a traditional job function, unlike sales or marketing. This is set to change as the top talent is now moving into this part of the organisation.

When Meshach first learned about Allbound, he was not aware of PRM (Partner Relationship Management) software, once it was explained it was a light-bulb moment – and that is how he sees the progression with clients. 

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“People just GET IT – it makes such sense, and they can see the value.”

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Meshach was the first UK hire for Allbound and the team has now grown to include local support, sales, marketing, customer success and implementation teams all looking after EMEA customers. The growth has been compounded in recent years as Allbound has seen significant increases in portal traffic due to the hybrid working model. As people were unable to meet F2F, partners still needed access to vendor resources 24/7. As Meshach puts it, this increase has seen “a paradigm shift” in the ways in which partners are using the Allbound platform.  

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“Although personal relationships are important, the platform enables our customers to directly attribute engagement to success and the visibility that provides channel teams enables them to understand their channel without the need for meetings.”

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Meshach endorses that the channel is no longer an after-thought, but one of the primary business models, supported by technology. Anyone with internet access can forge partnerships with anyone around the globe and scale more effectively. As channel is prioritised, people are coming into the channel roles, and this is now a recognised profession. Whether you are in Atlanta or London, in Munich or in Tel-Aviv,  the appetite is the same – companies now understand that leveraging a channel ecosystem is the best way to scale effectively.  

 

What skills are required for a channel role?

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“For the most part I am a numbers person and I think in terms of metrics. As a SaaS business in EMEA we have metrics all going the right way; ARR, TCV, customer retention, footprint, implementation cycle and ratings. But this also needs to be coupled with the strong impact of the EMEA team, individual personalities, and being able to delegate to those who are better than I at doing certain things.”

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Meshach is very clear about his management style and how that is helping to grow the business. He believes in giving people the reigns and empowering them to be the very best version of themselves. This is demonstrated by the fact that almost every person in EMEA has been promoted over the years. But he has also hired experienced as well as those who need to grow into the role. Aptitude and inquisitiveness are also traits that he takes into consideration as sometimes the best performers are those who are good at learning new things and are curious by nature. 

Meshach has his own mentors, some who are aware they are his mentors, and some, he confesses, who are not aware! He takes this role internally as a mentor very seriously to ensure people are challenged, but with realistic goals. He is a big fan of training and developing the team and giving everyone the opportunity – but fundamentally making sure everyone is happy.