How Distributors Help Partner Programs Go Global With Bryan McGlynn

Bryan McGlynn: I could go out there and talk about what we're doing globally, what we're doing to grow the business, what the overall plan is, but ultimately they want to buy locally from a local partner, who speaks the local language. And that's where distribution can really help.

Tyler Calder: This is Get It, Together, the podcast where partnership and go-to-market leaders share the real stories behind programs they've built and scaled. Today, I was joined by Bryan McGlynn on the latest episode of Get It, Together, and we talked about something a lot of partner teams know they need, maybe they've thought about it, but don't always know how to get there, which is global distribution.

Tyler Calder: Bryan spent nearly a decade at Arrow, one of the world's largest distributors, working across major tech brands like HPE, Palo Alto Networks, Oracle, Splunk, Riverbed. And he then took that operator's view into companies like Check Point and Keeper, where he [00:01:00] helped, build and scale global partner programs.

We talk about what it takes to become distribution-ready, how to think about partner tiering at the global level, when you should expand globally, What are those signposts? What are those milestones? And why distributors matter more than most SaaS teams probably realize, and how local market knowledge coming from these distributors and these partners can really make or break your international and global partner motion. Enjoy!

Tyler Calder: Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Get It, Together. Today I am chatting with Bryan McGlynn. Bryan, welcome to the show. How you doing today?

Bryan McGlynn: Very good. Thank you for having me.

Tyler Calder: Awesome. Me as well. today we are gonna get into your background, which has largely been kind of the global side of partnerships, which I, I think is really exciting and really interesting because it's such a huge opportunity for most organizations, to start thinking globally, at a certain point. So super, super interested in having that conversation. Your [00:02:00] background is, super interesting. You've spent, almost a decade on the distributor side with Arrow. you've seemingly taken a lot of that knowledge and applied it elsewhere when going global. let's talk about that journey. What kinda got you to the global stage?

Bryan McGlynn: I think I was in a way, fortunate to start at a distributor, I started at Arrow, right? Arrow's a global company. I started with the US region, lot of people when they get started in the channel or in sales, they're in a small region, right?

You know, it could be a, a large region, talking Mountain States, something like that. I started with the US, the smallest region that I covered. and, you know, really taking the lessons that I was able to learn at Arrow. So I covered a ton of brands while I was there.

So I started, as an inside sales rep, in renewals. and so HP was the largest one that I started with. and this was prior to the split. after the split in 2016 that, became, uh, HPE, on the, infrastructure compute storage side. and then flipped over to security my last couple of years, while I was at Arrow.

and in the [00:03:00] meantime, I, made a small move, from Cleveland out to Denver, to Arrow's headquarters. And, you know, while I was there, I covered a ton of brands. You know, uh, started with HP, but Palo Alto Networks, Oracle, RSA, Splunk, Riverbed, you name it, um, in the s- in the networking security space, touched on a bit and was able to take a little bit of what they did, right?

And see what they did that worked, see what they did that maybe didn't work, and try to apply it to, my career, really. then I moved over to Check Point. My role turned into a Americas, So half the globe, right? Uh, in North and South America. I don't speak Spanish or anything, but at least I was able to, you know, kind of understand how the business is different and how it works, in South America.

 So I was able to work with Canadians as well. from there, was really able to, to take, that knowledge and kind of expand that around the globe. And we're very fortunate, right? That English is, is somewhat of a universal language, right?

That we can, take what we have and, go on the road and, really communicate. The world's so small nowadays, you know. So, and [00:04:00] took that to the world stage, which was just awesome. So it was great to take what I've learned and, help scale, at Keeper.

Tyler Calder: Nice. That's awesome. why don't we just dive right into that? going back to the start of Keeper and, building out their global partner program, what did that look like? Where did you start? How did it evolve? What were the milestones you looked at? really where I see a lot of interest from our customer base coming from is when should I think about going global? what are the milestones or the signals that suggest, hey, you know what? I've maxed out the opportunity in, let's say, North America. Now it's time to continue to expand our TAM. Let's do that geographically. how do you work through that? How have you thought about that?

Bryan McGlynn: Yeah. So, you know, there was someone I worked with, uh, at, at Arrow and at, and again at Check Point that kind of said job description. He's like, "This is you." Like, "This is, this has got you written all over it. You should apply for this."

And so ended up going over there and it, and it was, a great place to, take everything I've learned, right? And where I could [00:05:00] apply it quickly. some, uh, uh, legacy com- companies, Arrow included and Check Point, you know, they're, they're kind of established, so it's hard to change the course, quickly.

It's like steering a cruise ship. going to a, a smaller company like Keeper, I was able to implement things, with the support of leadership, very quickly, right? And, and have big impact. when I was over there, you know, they didn't really have ton of, consistency and standardization in, in the contracts that were signed.

There was nothing wrong with them, but it just wasn't standardized. And so, my boss and I, uh, we kind of sat down and we said, "Well, we have been in the industry, for 40 years combined plus, So what are other vendors doing, that's working?"

'Cause obviously it's working. we decided, you know, this is what we expect out of the partnership, right? Because it really is a partnership. This is what we want out of you. We want you to have certifications. We want you to have sales goals, some sort of revenue gate.

and then what are you gonna get in return, it's not a, a one-way street. And so from [00:06:00] there we can look at, you know, we're gonna put you into a level. A lot of people go with metals, right? or gemstones. Whatever they want to do, Premier partner, authorized, platinum, what- whatever you want to call it.

And so we sat down and, designed that, asking the partners, to, commit to us, This is what we wanna see out of you, and this is what you're gonna get in return. and then in return, not only are they gonna have the standardized discount, but it's that consistency that they can expect and understand.

So, we as part of the channel, we need to know what to expect and what to forecast. So especially a lot of these larger companies, you know, they got to report these numbers to the street. and so they don't want to be making five points on one deal and 30 points on another deal, right?

they want it to be consistent and in the middle so they can be predictable. and they also want to build that trust, right? So, we, wanted to make sure that, we designed a program that they could really get behind. and at the size that we were, we ended up going with a mostly global program.

So some of the larger [00:07:00] vendors out there, maybe they're large enough to have a US program and a European program, but, we weren't quite that large yet. So we had to make it fit globally. when I jumped in and started, we would have deal registrations coming in all over the place, right?

We would get a ton of deal registrations coming in, and it wasn't, again, standardized in You're in the East Coast, you should have this partner. You're in Italy, you should have this partner. It kind of all came in together. and so that was, to me, a real sign that we need to kind of focus this energy that's coming in, and put it in the right direction.

Because otherwise, you're just losing a lot of this energy, and momentum, just the heat out in the space, right? It's, it's just gone, And so you, you really have to focus where it's going and cut out that noise so the channel team and the channel account managers can go out and meet with the partners and take those deal registrations that are coming in, work with the sales team, and close those deals,

 [00:08:00] ultimately it was about having those deals come in but you don't want to have to look up what someone's discount is or check a contract on every deal that's coming in. You want it to be standardized so you can start turning and burning a little bit quicker, especially in the SaaS space.

Tyler Calder: I want to quickly go back to, to something you said, 'cause I'm,always interested. You said when you got into the tiering, you know, you, you were setting expectations for the partner. You know, what are the things that they're gonna commit to? What were the things that you were asking partners to commit to based on tier?

 I ask 'cause that's one of the common questions that we get is,

how should partner leaders think about tiering and, you know, effectively asking partners to make commitments?

Bryan McGlynn: Yeah, we, you know, what we wanted was, you know, especially in a high growth, space or, you know, when you're, smaller trying to get established, you don't wanna keep out partners, right? But you also don't want to just authorize everyone for one $300 transaction, Because it's paperwork, may or may not be worth it.

that's where you bring distribution in, and we can talk about that later. But ultimately, our goal [00:09:00] was to look at our authorized set of partners. And for every vendor out there or most vendors out there, this is gonna be 90% of the population, It's gonna be most of them, because they're not all doing a ton of transactions.

maybe they have one customer selling infrastructure and they have a need for security, and you can sell them security or vice versa, right? so you know, you have that large portion, they go into what we called an authorized bucket. And so what we did was we, had them take a certification.

It was very minimal, make sure that they sign up a contract. And actually what we did was we wanted to take some of that burden and put that on distribution, right? So rather than going through with and bogging down our legal team to get them signed up, we would have a call with a distributor where-wherever they were locally and say, "Hey, do you have a contract with, let's say, Ingram Micro?

And why don't you call them and make sure that you've got credit there, make sure you're all good, and then we'll get you into our partner portal," And then we can start on the [00:10:00] training and, that sort of stuff. And thereby, accepting, what they needed to do to go into the partner portal.

But that was at just the authorized level, right? Because this is the ninety percent. this is gonna be your shavings. And I had a leader I worked for previously that would say, "Shavings add up to piles. You don't wanna lose them," right? So, we wanted to make sure that it was easy for them to get started and have what they need.

Typically, we have that stuff on a partner portal that they can go and be kind of self-service. And then when we get into the next tier, and this I would say is the next biggest bucket, depending on the size of your business, what we had was authorized silver, gold, platinum.

 maybe you only have three levels. it really depends on, on that size. But, we took the next biggest chunk and their discount changed a bit. Now, this one we asked a little bit more of, so we had a revenue gate, and obviously that's gonna depend on the size of your business. And then we asked for engineer to be certified and take classes based on what we needed.

So, that was another piece of what we had to do is design certifications, to come out to have them take [00:11:00] those, right? And what we did was then we kind of just scaled it from there. So we've got that bucket. That bucket gets smaller and smaller, but what's interesting is that the smallest bucket is typically the largest piece of revenue,

Where you've got your three-letter, VARs out there, your CDWs, your SHIs. Those guys are your largest revenue, and they're typically sitting at the platinum or diamond or whatever you wanna call that highest level And we're asking more and more of them, again, with a higher revenue gate and also with, making sure that they take more certifications to kind of scale with that business.

 they've got engineers that are on there, you know, they've got the resources. And so we want it to be a partnership. They're gonna get a larger discount, but we want them to invest in us as well. And typically, you'll take the MDF and, you know, if that's available, depending on how, the vendor does it, and kind of shift that or allow or disallow a partner to get MDF, you know, to try to develop their market, if [00:12:00] they're, let's say, authorized or registered or whatever you wanna call it, maybe they don't get MDF or maybe they get minimal or maybe they need to work through a distributor, to sort of take some of that energy and shift it over there.

and then those numbers kind of go up as you get into the three letters or you get into the pay-to-play type VARs that are out there.

Tyler Calder: the world of distribution, I think is, if you're in it, you get it.

Bryan McGlynn: Угу

Tyler Calder: it, it seems highly complex and people don't even know where to start.

what would you recommend to partner leaders that have never tapped into distributors? how should they think about it?

Again, similar to the, you know, going global question.

Bryan McGlynn: Ja

Tyler Calder: Like, is your path to going global distributors? Like, is that the right path?

Bryan McGlynn: In, in a word, yes.

 in my nine, 10 years that I was at Arrow, I covered, some of the world's largest companies,

In HPE, Palo Alto Networks, Oracle, Riverbed, Splunk, these enormous companies, right? And they have been established and growing and do billions of dollars in [00:13:00] revenue. and they have best practices in place, right? And things that work. when you are at a vendor and your career, starts at working for a vendor, you're kind of in a silo.

And that isn't the worst thing, right? Because Your knowledge can be really deep in that product or that segment. but you don't, in a way you don't have exposure to some of your competitors or even different, uh, similar in that they're in technology, but different types of vendors that are out there.

where you're comparing a, you know, an HPE to a Palo Alto Networks. They're both enormous. They both have a ton of employees. They both, experience lots of growth. They, you know, there's a lot going on. but they're only overa- overlapping just a little bit in what they do. And what you'll find that at these larger vendors is that people are so specialized that they only know a little bit about everything else, and they know a lot about one thing.

And when you're at a distributor, you kind of have to know A lot, maybe a [00:14:00] medium amount of everything, right? And everything from, from the, customer placing an order, and really even going back further to d- you know, demand generation, right, to customer placing order and then that PO going to the partner and then the partner PO going to the distributor, distributor PO, you know, order coming back the chain, the invoice and, whether it's a contract or a product that needs to ship.

there's a lot of operational challenges that you come across because, you take a distributor like an Ingram Micro, TD SYNNEX, or an Arrow, and they're covering thousands of different brands and tens of thousands of customers, right? And so they need to fit, those orders in through their system, you know, their back-end ERP, whatever,that might be, whether it's like an Oracle or SAP or something like that.

But they're gonna need to take each of those products and throw them into their system to make it work, which is why, and, and I promise you this is going somewhere, which is [00:15:00] why you want to lend or lean on them a bit as you want to expand globally. So, again, you've got this energy coming in, and if you don't focus it,

it's just gonna dissipate to heat. And so you want to go and make sure that you are working with them,  to to go into those markets. So I don't speak Italian, and in Italy, they love to buy from a partner who speaks Italian, right? And so we would m- meet with a distributor and make sure that they understood our product and, we work with Allnet Italia.

They're great, great people. And they would, take that off of our plate, Because we couldn't go in and, and understand the local market, but we have the product, We've got a product which is great, and we would go and lean on them to go into that global market for us.

They're the boots on the ground,  that's gonna expand into that local market. They know the local regulations. They know who to sell [00:16:00] to, they know who's buying what. Um, and you know, when When you find yourself as a, as a vendor here in North America, as we do, there's a lot of us that are expanding and growing.

We can't always hire in every country throughout the EU or, or in APAC, right? And so we need to rely on somebody, that sits in region. And that's where the global piece kind of comes in, with distributors.

Tyler Calder: did you ever get to a point where you had FTEs sitting in those locations or was everything driven through the distributors, localized partners?

Bryan McGlynn: So, uh, so at Keeper specifically, our European, business was based out of Ireland in Cork, which I love Cork. that's where of our employees and that supported EMEA were based out of. in APAC, we are based out of Japan.

And so that allowed us to have that, follow the sun mentality, right? Where, you're not working at midnight to try to sell into somewhere halfway around the world. then beyond that, you know, it was depending on the [00:17:00] size of the company, as companies grow, they need to start expanding,

And putting their own people, into, let's say, Italy or in, you know, we had a few people that lived outside of Ireland, but for the most part that, they were all centrally based there, in Ireland. Um, and so we would use them, To work with the partners and 'cause it'sjust a quick flight over to wherever their market is.

And again, just like we do here in the States where we say, "Hey, you're gonna cover the Southeast. You're gonna have Georgia and Florida," right? Over there, you know, you're gonna be in Benelux, or you're gonna be in the DACH region. You're gonna cover, the Nordics, You're gonna cover a region just like we do states because they all kind of have their own regional, differences, just like we do in the States, with a lot more history behind it.

But they still are very similar in a lot of ways and in their buying habits and, and what it takes to grow the business in each of those regions.

Tyler Calder: Nice. Very cool. going back to working with distributors, what are the things partner leaders should be thinking about when they start their distribution [00:18:00] journey? So what does it mean to be distribution ready, I suppose is the question?

Bryan McGlynn: typically, you've grown to a point where you can't handle the operational side of it, the credit checking side of it, the contract side of it, all of this operational stuff that's in the background that, um, you, you need to somehow get help with that, because otherwise you're gonna have to hire a ton of people to take care of that.

 you're already working with partners. and I think this, piece here, I think is important for, leaders that have never worked with a distributor before to understand and some of their sales reps too, who haven't. very large majority of the partners that are out there are buying at least one thing from Arrow, TD SYNNEX, Ingram, from one of those distributors that because...

And, and, and those are just the large ones, right? There's also, I don't wanna forget exclusive networks, right? [00:19:00] There's, LiquidPC, uh, AB Distributing, both out of Chicago, right? There are other distributors that are out there that are on the smaller scale. But every partner that's out there, unless they are super brand new and have no customers or one or two customers, they're buying or sourcing something from those distributors.

And so, that was one of the things that we had to do at Keeper was, "Hey, when you're talking to the partner, just ask them who they buy from," cause if you don't ask them, they're just gonna assume that it's direct. Um, you know, "Hey, are you buying from Ingram?" "Well, yeah, we are.

We're buying $100 million worth of Palo from Ingram," or whoever, whatever, insert vendor and insert distributor. They already have these relationships with them. And so keep that in mind as a, a channel leader that this isn't like, you're asking them to do something they're not already doing to some capacity.

And it's just gonna help you, get that started, especially in that registered, [00:20:00] authorized long-tail bucket of your partners. Because unless you wanna hire, 15, 20 more people, to onboard and train, they're not gonna get any support, because your CAMs or channel partner business managers, channel bus- whatever you wanna call them, they're gonna be so busy onboarding, right?

And trying to collect on, outstanding invoices, whatever they need to do, right, to make sure they get paid, that's like the small business stuff. But when you wanna grow into medium and then large business, you can kind of shift that and protect yourself and protect your company a bit as well because you take that credit and you shift it downstream a bit, to a distributor,

And, in some, some cases they talk about basis points over there, percentages of percentages, Because they operate on that volume, And you don't operate on volume unless you kind of know what you're doing, Or if you've, you've done it before. And so they're able to quickly turn and burn, but still bring the [00:21:00] value, right?

It's not all about just turning and burning, But it does allow you to scale because you can shift some of that training burden, some of that demand generation and move it out there. and for a company like Keeper, with, with Ingram, you know, it, added a little bit of, um, some accountability,

Or, uh, behind us, As they said, "Hey, you know, we're on Ingram's line card now," right? And you're like, "Oh, well," you know, that it means something in the space, right? Because you know that they're one of the world's largest distributors, in the technology space. So you really wanna make sure that, you are focused on those things because otherwise you're gonna spend a lot of time spinning your wheels trying to onboard people,

 when you could be training, a few people at a distributor and they'll get paid on performance. That, that's the best part about the channel, Is that, you don't pay them up front like you pay an FTE. You don't have to pay, uh, their, uh, health insurance and their 401k, right?

They get [00:22:00] paid on performance, You sell what you need to sell, and they, put a little bit of margin on it, where they need to do that and then that's what they're gonna take home. and we grow together, as a channel. distributor, just like the partners, we're growing together.

They make more money, you as a vendor make more money, partner makes more money. It's, you know, it's kind of all together in a ecosystem.

Tyler Calder: You mentioned, a number of different distributors there.

do you work with one? Do you work with all? how does that work?

Bryan McGlynn: actually, I'm glad you brought that up, because I think a mistake that people make, is over-distributing, when they're first getting started. when you look at, um, you know, you go meet with Exclusive, you go meet with Arrow, you go meet with Ingram, TD SYNNEX, the larger ones

 they will, tell you how much they're growing their business, and they will if you do it the right way, distribution is, kind of like an amplifier, right? without an input going into an amplifier, there's nothing coming out,

So you need to put the, the right stuff in and it will make it [00:23:00] grow and get larger. And so what we were doing at Keeper, which is a strategy that, Scott and I, uh, wanted to do, is we had a broad line distributor, in many cases was Ingram Micro, uh, in the commercial space. And then we would typically have like a regional, a smaller distributor as well.

And a lot of times they fill different parts of the market, where one might have a great or large relationship with a three-letter VAR, right? And, they're almost, passing stuff through,  It's very thin-margin because they've got other, lines of business to kind of carry it.

And so, when you're a large VAR, you might be looking at the bottom line that, "Hey, maybe I can get a couple extra points if I go this direction." Whereas if you have a, a regional distributor, let's take like an AB, a Liquid PC, those guys might be a little bit more,  traditional value-add where they're gonna try to go out there and sell with you, right?

It's, it's, an, a lot more, the [00:24:00] co-selling. And I don't wanna take away from the large ones like they don't do any co-selling, 'cause that's not the case. what that allowed us to do is kind of cover the entire market, is that, well, you've got, this large distributor and you probably already have a credit line with them.

You're already, selling a bunch of, products to them, already, or your partners are, I should say. And then you've also got, if they don't wanna work with them for some reason, you know, you've got a backup in the, smaller distributor. So, if you want to, get to a greater reach, your broad lines are really gonna be the ones that you wanna go and kind of focus on and invest in because they're selling to thousands of partners,  If you have a specialized market or you're more local, you'll wanna go with a local type distributor, and like I said, I like to have both a bit of a Venn diagram. And what you don't wanna do is overdistribute yourself and then you end up diluting that value. Because what we would call at a distributor would be a race to [00:25:00] the bottom,

Where if, let's say you go and you sign every broadline distributor and a, and then a couple of, smaller, regional distributors. Well, now they're all fighting for every piece of margin that they can get, and they're gonna undercut each other. Because they've invested in this business as well.

So you wanna allow them to, grow your business without cannibalizing each other. and so what I would propose, is to meet with them depending on relationships that you have, and then see what they'll offer you and make a choice on the one that you wanna go with until your business is large enough to support both.

 I'm gonna throw a number out there and, and I don't, I don't know that I even should, but, if you're not doing 100-plus million dollars with one distributor, you might not be ready for another distributor, or beyond a, a regional a broad line.

if you're above that number, then maybe it makes sense, 'cause the margin that disties are gonna make, [00:26:00] right, is, is still pretty thin, and then your partners still have to make some margin as well. it's best to start broad line, start with a regional, grow those out until they're over capacity or until enough partners are asking broad line B or regional B to add you to that line card, and then you're ready to expand to the next one.

'Cause you don't wanna dilute the value that your distributors are already bringing. 'Cause then it just becomes commoditized, and they're, they're cannibalizing each other for basis points and, that doesn't help anyone, So definitely, better to start small in, in the number of distributors that you're working with.

Tyler Calder: Yeah, that, that feels like really sound advice. How, how do you think about measuring back to the business the impact of working with a distributor? is it as simple as revenue contribution? Is there more to it? what does that dashboard look like?

Bryan McGlynn: Yeah, that's-- actually a tough one, I think from a [00:27:00] partner-only perspective, it's a little bit easier to build a KPI and manage, this is the pipeline that was generated. This is what turned into revenue. number of deal registrations, that sort of stuff, right?

but with distribution, it gets a little bit more complicated than that, because depending on your strategy, depending on how many distributors you're working with, and what CRM you're using or PRM you're using, you may have deals that are, you know, let's take partner A, and you might have an opportunity in your system that shows for disti A and disti B.

Now you've doubled that, right? And now you're looking at like, "Hey, I've, generated all of this pipeline, but it really, should be half of that." so really comes down to the way that you're managing your CRM. However, there is something to be said about revenue growth and pipeline that is generated through, the disti.

And one of the things that, that we did with our marketing team at Keeper that I did like was that we would look at, the ROI on our marketing spend, but [00:28:00] we wouldn't do it on a individual, event basis. Because, the way the channel is kind of structured is that, you're bringing customers in with a partner that may or may not be ready to buy at that very moment, right?

But your goal is to plant a seed that when they're ready for whatever product you're selling, that they remember, "Hey, CDW sells this security product. I'm gonna call my CDW rep." And then they're gonna go and buy that from whoever the distributor is. And so it's kind of hard to track and attribute an event or demand generation that you do with a distributor all the way through to a deal closing.

So, you know, s- but, But you have to track that.it is a business of making money, So you do need to track those things. But I think the other thing that is probably missed on it, unless you're at the executive level, is, DSOs, right? So, [00:29:00] are they paying their bills on time?

Are we being paid as a vendor? for the invoices that we're sending out. Because that's the stuff that at the sales rep level, middle management level, management level, you're not really talking about that or thinking about that. But when you get up a little bit higher and you're looking at a CFO, you're looking at, potentially a controller, right?

You're looking at those minute details that are making sure that the business is healthy in the background, right? Which is where distribution kind of overlaps from that marketing sales side, into the operational financial side of it. because ultimately, one way you could describe a distributor is they're a bank,

They're a bank that's lending to your partners. it's allowing your partners to spend more money with you and the other vendors because they can borrow that from a distributor, with their 30, 60, 90-day terms with that distributor. And if you [00:30:00] negotiate your terms with the distributor so they can be favorable,

That, potentially you can reduce those DSOs, invoices get paid a little bit sooner, and then those basis points that I've talked about before, that's where you as a vendor,  you can see some incremental growth on the back end as invoices are coming in sooner and your cash flow is going up.

But again, that's something that is like, how do you sell that value to a sales rep, who is, on the street knocking on doors, selling into a local, let's say, a supermarket chain, how do you explain that to them? And, and that's why distribution tends to be, an enigma to some of them, that they don't understand that value on the back end.

Which is why when you get two people that have spent time at a distributor talking, it's like they're speaking a different language, Because they understand that, that whole [00:31:00] background level, and the financial side that's gonna impact the bottom line that is ultimately gonna help you, as a sales rep, but you just don't know it, right?

It's gonna make sure that your company's able to reinvest on whatever they need to do, whether it's the product itself, whether it's more marketing, but it's gonna, it's gonna keep that company, put more money in their pocket, That will ultimately help you as a sales rep, but not on a one-to-one basis.

It's gonna be a little bit more in the gray area, so to speak.

Tyler Calder: Gonna ask you something.

Bryan McGlynn: Sure.

Tyler Calder: As, as I've been doing.

Just gri- just grilling

Bryan McGlynn: think that's why I'm here, right? Is the,

is talk about ask questions. Yep, go ahead

Tyler Calder: what's a DSO?

Bryan McGlynn: so it's days outstanding, right? So your invoices, typically the way you look at it is like, Tyler's partner, VAR, Incorporated. I'm gonna sell something to you if it-- and, you're gonna sell it to your customer.

But I'm gonna offer you terms, right? I'm gonna invoice you, let's say it ships today[00:32:00] you know, you got thirty days to pay that. When you are talking to a CFO, they're gonna be looking at what receivables they have, and they're gonna say, "Okay, so Tyler and his company, they are, they're on net thirty terms," and which means that they need to pay their invoice in thirty days.

but they on average, are paying them in thirty-five or forty days, right? It means that they are behind a bit on when those invoices are due, meaning your cash flow is a little bit less predictable. It's a little bit more of a risk, when you're looking at it financially. Now, if you were to, go through a distributor,

Then, you give them whatever their terms might be, you would agree to that. But every partner that they sell to, they're gonna negotiate those terms independently for what's best for the both of them. So you as a vendor you're gonna say, "Well, I don't need to worry about Tyler's DSOs anymore,"

I'm gonna worry about the distributor. And because it isn't just Tyler's DSO, it's not just, Tyler's invoices, right? That I need to make sure are getting paid on time. I need [00:33:00] to make sure seven hundred partners are paying all of their bills on time. And now you can take that into seven hundred phone calls and whittle that down into the distributor,

 typically, they may have an early pay discount, like a one ten, net thirty. And they might take advantage of that knowing that I'm gonna pay you early 'cause I know Tyler's gonna pay me and I'll get an extra point discount, And this is where these basis points come in,

 that's what they're doing because they're, they have to think financially, as a bank. And that's why some of these distributors, I think this is another thing that, that isn't talked about that much, is that they have their own banks. For example, Arrow Financial Services and TD SYNNEX has their own bank.

 I don't know what they're called as much. I know Ingram has one, and TD SYNNEX has one. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but they are financial institutions that are part of their, distribution business. it's not the same as I'm gonna give you net thirty terms.

It's actually we're gonna lend you the money, right? And your vendor's gonna get paid right away, and you're gonna pay, uh, you know, via promissory note or [00:34:00] sign a contract, however you need to do to actually finance it, just like you would finance a car. And you can finance that, piece of technology that you need.

And, that's just another thing that, you can use through a distributor, when a, you know, maybe, deal is close but not quite ready to close, For financial reasons, For, whenever they have a budget, the budget is closed or they have approval to move forward, but they can't pay for 120 days,

Because that's when the checkbook opens. But they want the product now. they'll commit to it. They're ready to go. And so, you know, you could work with a distributor and their bank, to loan that money for the vendor to get paid upfront. And then, the bank will then invoice the customer, and they'll work out their own terms

Tyler Calder: Got it. Yeah, that's very cool. I'm always curious about, uh, cultural differences, differences geo to geo. what have you noticed [00:35:00] working globally around some of the differences in partner expectations, how they like to work?

It, could be either like very specific,

uh, examples and recommendations for folks that are thinking about going global. Could be kind of broader first principles thinking, what have you seen there?

Bryan McGlynn: Yeah, it was a, um, a lot of fun for me to learn that 'cause I'm, I've, I've always been interested in that. growing up taking, Spanish class, right, in middle school or high school or whatever, I, would think, "Hey, there's people out there just like us. I'm in Ohio,

They're in Spain, And they're living their life just like we are, I wonder what it's like there." this last year I got a chance to go on the road quite a bit, and not spend a lot of time in each place, but to go and, uh, you know, I got to go to Madrid, right?

I got to go to France and Italy, and meet with them. And,what I noticed, you know, is, They aren't that [00:36:00] different from what we're used to here. And I say we, North America in general, right? US and Canada is like, we are so, isolated in a lot of ways, I guess apart from Quebec.

We're so isolated, from what they're used to in Europe in that they all speak more than one language, right? They've all experienced so much more than we have. but because this country, or this country and Canada are so large, geographically and we all speak English, That, and that you can go and experience so much here, right?

Without needing to fly across the ocean, And so a lot of us don't get that opportunity because it's expensive, right? And can be scary, to say, "Hey, I've got to, fly into Stockholm and, my flight lands at 10:00 PM and I need to get to a hotel. I don't speak Swedish," "So what do I do?"

thankfully the internet, is very helpful, In translating and nowadays it's so easy to... I couldn't imagine doing this 20 years ago. so I've, uh, you know, [00:37:00] anyone who, maybe, was a trailblazer in that, uh, 20 years ago, you're amazing, because now I can just throw it into my phone, and say, "Hey, this is what I need to do."

English is, the universal language, It's the, uh, the language of the internet in a lot of ways. so a lot of them will speak English, but when it comes to selling into, we'll call it the love languages, right? Italian, Spanish, French, obviously there's history involved, but they typically like to buy from those that speak their language.

my first, event I was at, in France, I was the only one that didn't speak French. but in talking to people, they were very happy to meet me, very excited and happy to talk about, what we were doing. But the moment that they found out that our product was available in French and they can go through and get what they needed in French, And we had support in, local language, when they call in for support or their sales, the engineering, that they could actually have that in-depth conversation and they don't have to translate [00:38:00] before they talk to me, meant a lot, right?

So where I could go out there and talk about what we're doing globally, what we're doing to grow the business, what the overall plan is, but ultimately they want to buy locally from a local partner, who speaks the local language. And that's where distribution can really help. And I mentioned them before, but Allnet Italia, like I said, they're great people there and, you know, I did an event with them in Rome, and I don't speak Italian and, they would introduce me, we would talk to people, and ultimately then the questions would start coming in about the product and how do they buy it, all the detailed stuff, and that's where I needed to rely on the distributor.

I needed to rely on them to be able to do that. and it's not just the language, right? There's also, regulatory, there's, currency depending on, what you're selling. in the SaaS space, one of the things that was, uh, nice at Keeper compared to what I've been used to is that we were able to sell our product [00:39:00] in, in, multiple currencies,

So, you know, we could sell it in JPY or GBP depending on what, the customer wanted or needed. and you can't always do that, when you're selling a hardware product. and this is, I think another, layer where distribution can help you is that if you're selling a hardware product, you have to import at some point.

You don't want to have to deal with customs and the local laws, gonna need those partners, to do that. But if you can have a distributor who will do that for you, and typically they'll also do that currency conversion for you. and depending on your contract, there's a lot of different ways you can do it, but, a lot of times, you know, 'cause currency fluctuates, real time, right?

But where you might have a quote, to a, you know, a local customer, you know, here in North America and say, "Hey, this is gonna be The quote's valid for 30 days or 60 days or 90 days. Well, what we've seen over the last few years is that the global climate can [00:40:00] change so quickly that they and you should not be locking in a price in a different currency for that long.

 typically, what a distributor might only... take your quote, again, depending on contracts and that sort of stuff, they'll take your quote and they might honor it for 30 days, but to their customer, they're gonna re-quote it every two or three days. It's gonna fluctuate because they have to get a little bit closer to reality,

What they're gonna do is they're gonna make it easy on you as a vendor, and they're gonna say, your quote's good for 90 days or 30 days. That's what we're gonna do." Obviously, they might have to come back if something, very large fluctuates the currency, you know, s- because they don't want to lose money, obviously.

But what they're gonna do is they're gonna honor yours, and then they will re-quote as many times as they need to over that period, to protect themselves. and that, the customs and the currency conversion are, super important as you're going to scale, especially if you have [00:41:00] hardware.

 in the SaaS space, you know, I don't want to say it's not important, but the hardware makes it so much more difficult nowadays when you need to ship something across borders. You need and want to rely on someone who does that day in and day out. this is what they do,

 they're a bank, they're customs, they, they do that stuff for you. and again, this is one of those things that how do you explain that to a sales rep, And why this matters. and that's why you have me here to try to open up that window, to kind of understand why distributors are so important.

I was just amazed at the way the world works, right? I know that's a very, generic statement, but, to see what it's like in Australia, to go into the Nordics, to, Southern Europe, it was pretty awesome, To see, uh, what it's like, because selling into Southern Europe is different than selling into Northern Europe or Eastern Europe.

all I can say is to really, allow your distributors to help you do [00:42:00] that. because, as a loud American, it'd be hard for me to go into Germany and, explain to them, what I wanna sell, even though-- even if they speak English, you know, they wanna follow the rules.

They've got what they wanna do, and I might be, "Oh, we'll figure it out." And, you know, they'll look at me like I'm crazy, so you don't wanna do that. So you rely on, your Ingrams, or your Arrows, your Exclusive or, TV Synics, whoever you need to help guide you in that conversation.

in Canada it was a lot more like home. in Ireland too, they're very similar. I don't know if you can tell by the name and the hair, they remind me of a lot of my family, right? which was great. I always felt at home there, but I could be a little bit more, cross that bridge when we get to it, and we'll come to an agreement together.

But they don't necessarily wanna hear that in Germany or Switzerland, or Japan, They're all a little bit different, and you need to, as a vendor, be a little bit of a chameleon, to change, your colors to, to fit what you [00:43:00] need. but don't do that on your own. It's possible, but it's just so much easier to have someone that's there that knows how to make it more comfortable for your partners and your customers to scale.

Tyler Calder: as we, wrap up, I always like to close it out with some forward-looking thoughts. you mentioned at one point in the conversation, you know, it is, it is a small world and it's getting smaller.

Um, you mentioned, now it's easier to work, um, you know, across cultures and language, than maybe it was. Any prediction for what the world of distribution and global partner programs looks like over the next five years?

Bryan McGlynn: Yeah, it's, um, I think, the introduction of AI, into our life as, I don't know what it's done, if used correctly, it can make us more productive. Um, it also can add a lot of words, to things that, that may or may not need [00:44:00] it. I think one of the incredible things that it can do is give you a starting point,

'Cause it can ingest programs that exist already, that are available, and kind of help you come up with or summarize what maybe your competition's doing, right? or maybe what you're missing out on. The channel in general tends to, ebb and flow from distribution as, distributors merge, as partners merge.

'Cause I, I think over the last few years we've seen a lot of these smaller, medium-sized VARs consolidate, into, larger companies, just like we've seen distributors do that, just like we've seen vendors do that. And once you start to do that, you start to merge, private equity is getting more and more involved.

You're trying to squeeze out basis points on your deals. I think distribution becomes more and more important, in that you can shift [00:45:00] some of that financial burden, the operational burden, and increase your, cash flow, by investing a few points on the front end or even on the back end. overall, you see that go up.

And I think the more that we as a channel, continue to consolidate, there's more and more need for experts out there to say, "Hey, I went through this before when, this company bought these three companies and now they're one super company. And I went through this before. I lived it. Here's what worked, here's what didn't."

And they can advise on that. I, I think the other thing, I said earlier is that the world can change so quickly, as we have seen, that it changes so fast 'cause news travels so fast now. Yes, it's easier to get around. Now I can go and throw in Google Maps or Apple Maps almost wherever I'm at in the world and find a way where I need to go.

but at the same time, [00:46:00] everything is a lot more connected. And when there's a impact globally, it can happen and shift and change in real time, So you just need to be prepared for that.

Tyler Calder: Nice. That's awesome. If folks wanted to follow up, ask any questions, get in touch, how, how might they do that?

Bryan McGlynn: Yeah. So you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm actually a free agent at the moment, looking for my next role. so, reach out to me on LinkedIn, reach out through, Tyler. If you can't find me on LinkedIn, I would imagine you'll, uh, include a link or something on my profile.

 my contact information is on there. I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit, happy to answer any questions. Depending on the level of questions, may or may not be a fee. I'm kidding. It's fine. but yeah, if anyone has any questions or likes to talk through strategy, it's, it's something I love to do,

 I hope that came across right in this conversation is that I enjoy it and I have taken in a lot and, I want to teach, those that don't fully understand distribution of the channel and get them ready, for the [00:47:00] future.

Tyler Calder: Nice. Well, I think it certainly did come across. I think folks

have a lot to take away. So Bryan, I appreciate it and,

sure you may be flooded with some LinkedIn messages and,

Bryan McGlynn: No, I hope so. Yep, I'll, I'll be around. I appreciate it. Thanks, Tyler. Take care.

Tyler Calder: Thanks for listening to Get It, Together. If you want more resources to help you build and scale your partnership program, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app. And get more proven tips and tools at partnerstack.com/getittogether

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