How We Got There Mike Davis

In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with George Kenessey who is the CEO of Appiphony. Appiphony is a Product Development Outsourcer (PDO) and more recently an ISV themselves with Drive Connect on the AppExchange. George is one of the best humans and business leaders in the ecosystem. This conversation took place wayyyy back pre-Dreamforce but I finally got around to releasing it and it’s one of the most insightful ones. George shares his experience of helping companies launch on the AppExchange over the last 15 years as well as their own apps, taking their learnings from the PDO world to their own AppExchange journey.



He shares tips relevant to new ISVs going through the security process with Salesforce and then moves into GTM lessons from launching Drive Connect. They designed a PLG motion on the AppExchange, including building a way for customers to sign up for a trial and ability to purchase via Stripe on the backend. The best gtm motion they have found is writing specific content to help their customers and partners solve a problem that is related although not fully solved necessarily by Drive Connect. If you help people do their job for free, they will eventually give you money is something I say often and what George and team are doing over there.



Drive Connect has one of the best partner resources pages out there, I encourage you to check it out as you consider how well you are set up to enable SI partners.



Link to the episode in the comments (or on Apple Podcasts)



This episode is brought to you by Invisory. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: whether you’re looking to list on the AppExchange, are in the process of listing, or listed and looking to accelerate success.



Links:


George's LI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgekenessey/
Appiphony LI - https://www.linkedin.com/company/appiphony/
Drive Connect AppEx listing - https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000FMlVWUA1
Invisory LI - https://www.linkedin.com/company/invisory-co/
Drive Connect Partner Page - https://driveconnect.me/partner-resources/

In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Stephanie Betters who is the Founder and CEO of Left Main REI. Left Main REI is an OEM and (now) ISVforce partner of Salesforce focused on building for companies in the real estate vertical. As a fellow SUNY alum, it was great to hear Stephanie’s story of how she stumbled her way into the Salesforce ecosystem. As many founder stories go, she created Left Main REI after experiencing challenges (and an expensive SOW) in building out Salesforce to fit her business needs.



After realizing what she built had a market need in the Salesforce ecosystem, she started working with the Salesforce partnerships team and successfully launched after security review was completed. She shares why she decided to enter both an ISVforce and OEM agreement with Salesforce and where she’s found success in co-selling with Salesforce AEs with a clear way to help them. Now they have over a hundred customers, when they started Stephanie relied heavily on her network and thought leadership before uncovering more advanced motions like Salesforce AMP programs and co-selling.



In my opinion, Left Main REI’s focus and having a niche helped them with clarity of the strategy in co-selling with Salesforce AEs. They were able to share SIC codes where they were best when they met more and more AEs. Stephanie’s ability to empathize with the Salesforce AE gave her conviction to pursue the ISVforce agreement after initially just being OEM so they had a harmonious gtm approach with Salesforce.



This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors. Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond!



https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-betters-a09b2a59/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/leftmainrei/

https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000FMnPoUAL

https://www.linkedin.com/company/tequityadvisors/

In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Andrew Walker, who is the Founder at Sanitas Accounting. I consider Andrew a friend after our time together at TaskRay where he was our full-time CFO after starting as a fractional CFO. His business is now focused on helping smaller software companies with accounting and finance so they can focus on running their business.



We reminisce about our learnings alongside each other at TaskRay (where I headed up sales along with other revenue activities) from when he joined the business, including what he worked on in the first 90 days. Andrew shares how he optimized TaskRay’s cash position as we entered the start of the pandemic by incrementally improving our accounts receivable process, including moving our payment terms from Net 30 to Net 7. This created a give-get scenario for our sales team and helped us in our negotiation….in the rare cases when someone actually pushed back!



Other topics include legal agreement best practices around what really matters, friction between sales and finance, sales tax (which can pierce the corporate veil), pricing strategy, exiting the business, and more.



If you’re a founder without an FTE over finance, this episode is for you! If you are a gtm leader, get in the head of your finance counterpart with some lessons learned.



This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors. Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond!



https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrandrewwalker/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/sanitas-accounting-bookkeeping/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/tequityadvisors/

In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Jason Hoult, who is the President at Anvil App Works. We talk about the origin story of the business solving problems for his own business before launching as an OEM of Salesforce for a very specific niche. I am consistently inspired by the quality of businesses like Anvil App Works that can be built with an intentional focus like Jason and his team have done. As he puts it, “an overnight success, five years in the making”.

Jason shares how building the business bootstrapped helped them at the start then moved to raise a round to facilitate growth by investing in employees slightly before they needed that person.

Anvil App Works runs the EOS model to help the company stay focused and execute at a higher level, even helping define their initial target market of John Deere distributors to grow intentionally and learn the market. Since then they have widened to other distributor type organizations to expand their TAM. Jason also shares how they looked to Salesforce for guidance on things like marketing as well as increasing their average deal size by following their model of selling premium support and charging a percentage of annual spend to increase ARR. We talk about a variety of GTM topics and I appreciate Jason’s openness in sharing in this great episode.

Resources:

Website:⁠ ⁠https://anvilappworks.com/

Jason's LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhoult/

EOS: https://www.eosworldwide.com/

Behind The Cloud book: https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Cloud-Salesforce-com-Billion-Dollar-Company/dp/0470521163



This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors, a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies. They are focused on SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe and the MSP Clouds. Tequity has already completed 22 transactions in the Salesforce and Salesforce ISV ecosystems. Visit⁠⁠ ⁠tequityadvisors.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn how they Achieve great outcomes for our clients both in valuation and in terms.

In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Sam Yarborough,  (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yarborough-a96b3326/) who is the SVP of Partnerships at PFL (https://www.linkedin.com/company/pflcom/). We talk about rebooting a partnership program but starting with working on their Trailblazer partner score to build momentum and aligning closely with their Partner Account Manager (PAM) to build deep rapport. From there, they started diving deeply into an industry-specific approach vs. just having a horizontal message.

Sam and team has built an impressive solution in their instance of Salesforce to track partnerships with Salesforce and SIs in a scalable manner. All Salesforce AEs are now tracked and treated as customers, with marketing focus included.

Resources:

Website: ⁠https://www.pfl.com/

Sam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yarborough-a96b3326/

This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors, a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies. They are focused on SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe and the MSP Clouds. Tequity has already completed 22 transactions in the Salesforce and Salesforce ISV ecosystems. Visit⁠ ⁠tequityadvisors.com⁠⁠ to learn how they Achieve great outcomes for our clients both in valuation and in terms.

In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Cynthia LeCornu  (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthialecornu/) who is the Global Leader Salesforce Alliance at Avalara (https://www.linkedin.com/company/avalara/). We talk about aligning to Salesforce’s Customer360 vision, SI partnerships in the ecosystem, how to drive your ISV partner score, and more.

Cynthia brings a great energy and depth of experience to her partnerships. 

Here’s a closer look at the episode:


1:30 What Avalara does and Cynthia's role 
2:20 How did your experience inform your approach at Avalara or working with SI as an ISV?
3:30 Can you give an example to folks who are listening to what    a mutual SI goal might be?
4:39 What's the best go to market program you've ever created or the team's created?
6:16 What are you most proud of that you've accomplished?
7:08 What's a mistake that you've made along the way?
9:15 How you think about prioritization when everything could be a good opportunity?
11:00 From Public to Private again, what's changed, if anything?
13:00 How do you think about partnering? 
15:00 Heading into next year, what are you working on these days?
16:10 What can you share about the ISV partner score and how best to maximize, Avalara's performance on it?
23:00 Rapid Fire Questions



Resources:

Website: www.avalara.com

Cynthia’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-getchis-57075891/



This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors, a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies. They are focused on SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe and the MSP Clouds. Tequity has already completed 22 transactions in the Salesforce and Salesforce ISV ecosystems. Visit ⁠tequityadvisors.com⁠ to learn how they Achieve great outcomes for our clients both in valuation and in terms.