“Rather than hire direct salespeople, you can accelerate your sales by going through a third party who’ve already got a customer base. They’ve already got that reach. They’ve already got a marketing program, so they can take that product out for you really quickly.”
Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing Interview Series. Today, I’m really excited to speak to Stewart Townsend, who is the co-founder of Podcast Hawk, and also works as a consultant for Channel as a Service.
Stewart is the expert on channel remarketing, and supported SaaS household name Zendesk to find resellers for its products and grow the business into new markets. He was first brought into Zendesk in 2013 to build out a channel program across Europe. One of the biggest challenges he faced was educating people internally on what channel remarketing really meant.
Don’t feel clear on that yourself? In this episode, you’ll get the lowdown on what channel remarketing really is, why finding resellers is a great marketing strategy for your B2B SaaS company, and top tips to remember when nurturing channel partnerships.
Most importantly, you’ll hear how Stewart overcame his initial challenges with Zendesk to create a channel remarketing strategy worth at least $10m of revenue.
In this episode:
- The difference between channel remarketing and other direct marketing activities
- What it means to leverage channel marketing as a B2B business model
- How Stewart selected resellers for Zendesk
- Tips for building and maintaining successful channel partnerships
- The results: A million-dollar marketing strategy
About the guest:
SaaS veteran working with B2B companies, now boot strapping my own own company and hustling to grow revenue
Timestamps
01:00-01:34 What is channel remarketing?
01:35-02:18 Channel remarketing vs white-labeling: What’s the difference?
02:19-03:33 Channel remarketing as a business model
03:34-06:13 Why choose channel remarketing?
06:14-07:25 Can you use channel remarketing alongside other marketing activities?
07:26-13:13 Case study: How Stewart selected resellers for Zendesk
13:14-16:17 What is a reseller looking for in a partner?
16:18-18:27 How do you make the partnership successful?
18:28-20:10 How does the relationship differ from integration partners?
20:11-22:03 Stewart’s biggest challenge: Growing his brand in the reseller market
22:04-24:46 Working with Zendesk: The results