Forming the Agency Channel for Hotjar Live on this Podcast w/ Dan from Trellis & Sharon from Hotjar

Transcript

Sharon: [00:04:24] Hi, so I'm Sharon, I'm the VP of marketing and sales at hot tub and the hot jar for those, you don't know it is a service that helps product teams to understand how they use is their experience. The product and we're very early in the start of our partnership program. In fact, we're just in testing stage, a partnership program got kicked off by Dan and trellis.

[00:04:47] We've expanded to another four agencies but it's still an experimentation phase, really learning from the agencies and the experience that they're having. And we'll to. It's that Al punish a program increase to 

[00:04:58] Alex: [00:04:58] three this year. We were just talking for 20 minutes about what we're sort of looking at doing or what Sharon is looking at doing with this program and how it's kind of formalizing on the backs of these five pillar partners, these power partners, these really awesome agencies trellis of course, is the one where we've picked out to talk to today.

[00:05:18] And it's a really compelling, because you have a lot of freedom at this point. You can go any direction you want, and it's under you. The CMO, which is unique. Actually, we usually see partnerships under sales, under CRO under VP of sales. But you know, I, for one, I think this is a great move for Hotjar to put it under marketing.

[00:05:37] Marketing kind of steer the formation of the program, do a lot of co-marketing events, webinars, content with partners, bake it into the culture of the company, but Daniel you're on because you started this whole snowball for Hotjar and trellis around the partner program. I think you were the one that lit the match, but let's talk about a, of course yourself title, what you do at trellis, but then talk about the Genesis of the conversation with Hotjar, how it became a part of your stack and where it's at.

[00:06:05] Alex, thanks for 

[00:06:05] Dan: [00:06:05] having us. Yeah. I'm Dan Crowther, I'm senior manager of partnerships and business development at trellis. We're a e-commerce agency focused on custom and platform development with Shopify, Adobe, big commerce. We also do systems integrations and a lot of back office work as well.

[00:06:21] But the, yeah, the the origination of this came from really our kind of pre fee Shopify implementation proposals in which we were embedding links to hot char. Our project managers and teams just found it to be a really great suite of tools. And so we were outwardly recommending Hotjar prospects, you know, as the partner guy who came on just about a year ago, I realized that we didn't have any kind of partner arrangement or really a point of contact over at Hotjar.

[00:06:49] And so I reached out and was really happy to find that that Sharon and the team over there were, were sort of exploring the idea of starting an agency partnership channel and working with firms like ours. And so I just volunteered to help them. And so that's really how this came about. Awesome. 

[00:07:06] Alex: [00:07:06] Yeah, this is, this is very cool and exciting, and it's really good to talk at this stage because things haven't been cemented in yet.

[00:07:12] It sounds like you're letting the agencies, Sharon you're letting the agencies help you mold this partner program around their needs. They were still 

[00:07:19] Sharon: [00:07:19] very much learning at this stage, what agencies need from a partner program and what they need from us. And we're testing out some ideas. And learning that we're wrong.

[00:07:27] So we initially thought that commission and having a share of the revenue would be the most exciting thing to agencies. And I think all five agencies have mentioned to us well, well, that's nice, but actually what we want is to learn from you about what's best practice for our clients, learn how to use the tool in a much better way.

[00:07:44] So that's a really good 

[00:07:45] Alex: [00:07:45] learning for us. I love it. Daniel, let's talk about that. That's perfect. Place to start. 

[00:07:50] Dan: [00:07:50] I mean, for us, I mean that that's. Saying to Sharon, you know, I really don't care at this point about revenue share or any of those sorts of things. That's really the most important thing is that, you know, we have points of contact and that yes, that our teams and so on can, can reach out and ask questions.

[00:08:10] You know, so that we become enabled in a way that we currently weren't. 

[00:08:14] Let's 

[00:08:14] Alex: [00:08:14] talk about that, Sharon. So from what he just said, and from what you've learned from the other four agencies involved what is the incentive structure in your mind today? What would be a list of things that you're going to do for partners that you're going to build roles and operations?

[00:08:29] Sharon: [00:08:29] Yeah. Well, we're still, we're still figuring that out. I mean, the revenue share. It was the first thing that we came to them. Well, we'll keep offering that. What we've just enabled is actually we've expanded our customer success team to have one person who's available for the agencies to jump on calls and, and share with them the new features that we've got audited.

[00:08:48] You know, the cool things that they've seen other clients do with Hotjar that they might find useful, or even just a deep dive with them on any particular end client and say, oh, here, you might want to suggest that they try this. They're not when we're seeing that they're not doing this with their Hotjar account.

[00:09:03] So we're putting resource behind that. And then beyond that, we're still learning. So I'd love to hear from you, you know, and, and Dan is too, you know, what else Hotjar can and should do to make the partnership program a great success. 

[00:09:14] Alex: [00:09:14] Well, I have my opinions, Dan, but you're the agency and the partner chair.

[00:09:18] So let's talk real quickly about what you would want out of Hotjar to make this as successful as 

[00:09:25] Dan: [00:09:25] possible. I think the, you know, getting to the kind of, you know, enablement, you know, knowledge furthering and so on, you know, I think that, you know, for, for us at trellis, we're, we'd be really interested in co-creating white papers and case studies.

[00:09:41] You know, kind of taking a different approach with some of the kind of like if you'd like go to market or, you know, thought leadership type of type of things that we've, we've done with with other partners of ours. I mean, we see, you know, Hotjar as really a universal application. And so with those types of relationships, we can do a lot more interesting things.

[00:10:01] We think from both from a tent, you know, point of view, pitching our services, you know, to put it sort of overly because we're not selling against really anything else. Right. This is just an, this is just about understanding and analyzing customer interactions and so on. You know, that to me is really the, the most important thing.

[00:10:21] I mean, it's one thing to have. You know, like all your referral agreements and contracts in place and, you know, have a really well-defined program and a portal where the agency partner can go and. Collateral. And that's maybe not nearly as interesting to us as, like I say, to engage point of contact that can get you answers that wants to develop answers to questions that you're asking together.

[00:10:43] So, and I think we're seeing all of that, so yeah, we're we're really? 

[00:10:46] Alex: [00:10:46] Yeah, that was good. So, Sharon, obviously you have to boil all these. You know, experiences down into operating procedures, you have to boil it down to, you do have to have contracts at the end of the day. You do have to track these partners.

[00:10:58] You'd have to make sure that it's a repeatable thing. So you have to productize everything that Daniel just said, which is the hard part. So we can put that into breasts tax here where it's essentially Daniel and trellis are doing a lot with Hotjar. Some of that is productizable. Some of that is packageable, you know, some of it's not.

[00:11:18] So the things. Is art, our trellis IP or not. So the things that they do, that's really custom behind the scenes. They've got their secret sauce, of course, but what they are doing with Hotjar is baking hot jar into specific services. So they have a service name that is a retainer name under let's just say product analytics, or they have a, I don't know, a setup of a new blank, blank, blank, and it includes Hotjar and this is the way they're implementing hot jar.

[00:11:45] And this is what it means to that service. It adds a whole realm of service revenue because Hotjar provides the data, the steering, all of that. So you don't have to go to an agency and explain that they know they already do it. So your job is to find an agency, right? Trellis or an agency that's able to start offering that and say, okay, well, here's the end goal.

[00:12:08] Here's what you should be doing with Hotjar based on our top tier agency partners, the ones that you want to be, you want to be trellis. Here's what you have to do. And here's the way I'm going to support you in building. So you're going to set up a new service on top of Hotjar, but because you're a partner, we are going to make sure that you have success building that service, testing it on a few initial clients and then going to market together.

[00:12:36] And that's where it becomes a partnership. So when you go to market together, that's where incentive structure comes in. Okay. Well, he mentioned co-marketing put that into your incentive structure. Co-marketing can be. Initial partners get a highlight in our blog. They get a highlight in our newsletter. As soon as we get done with a couple check marks, we've got to check a few boxes.

[00:12:55] Then they get put into our partner directory. Great co marketing done now co-selling well, they're going to want to sell a couple initial. You mentioned on your landing page, in your partner docs, we will get on those calls with you. We will even do some account mapping routines with you to see if there's overlap in our systems already.

[00:13:16] And we will co-sell with you. Okay. Support. Let's talk about support. You mentioned, you have a CS team that is dedicated to partners. Perfect. Do you have a partner success manager and maybe there's a direct phone line to that person? This is something Zapier did. That was genius. Where if I'm a user of Zapier, I only have chat and email support, but if I'm a user of Zapier with an agency, That agency is a partner of Zapier.

[00:13:42] My agency has a direct phone line to their support. That's huge. That goes a long. Yeah. So let's talk about that real quick. So of those things that I've mentioned, are you starting to kind of get a little clearer picture of like, okay, I can productize this part. Yeah. 

[00:13:58] Sharon: [00:13:58] That's very helpful. And I have another question for the two of you.

[00:14:02] How important Dan mentioned the portal, how important do you think it is for us to get a partnership software that can. Provide this sort of portal to the agencies. 

[00:14:11] Dan: [00:14:11] God, I love this because the portal, just by definition, cumbersome, right? Some partner portals, depending on the partner. I mean, it's like, I feel like I'm back working at a lead gen firm, you know, that's not my bag.

[00:14:25] I don't, I don't like doing that. And so, you know, I really just want to, you know, say sort of like a schlocky agent or so on, like, Hey. Sharon meet Doug. And you two take it from here and that's in my responsibilities over. So yeah, I mean, we. You know, I'm kidding around to a certain extent. I do like the partner portals from an asset point of view for a grabbing go type of thing.

[00:14:50] Like you need, you know, you need a snippet or, you know, something like that's great. And for an obviously for our billable staff who, you know, need enablement tools and certifications, so on, they need a place to go, obviously, but for referrals and those sorts of things. Yeah. If I had my druthers. It would be, it would be a an old world sort of practice because the thing is, is like at the end of the day, you know, software is not a hundred percent either.

[00:15:16] Right. And so we've had, we've had issues. With leads, getting submitted to partner portals and sort of disappearing and these sorts of things. And so that's sort of my feeling on it. Fluidity is just very important. I think in our thing. 

[00:15:28] Alex: [00:15:28] Yeah. Partnership, you know, it's not a vendorship is Brian at noon today.

[00:15:33] He's got that talk, Sharon. I told you about he'll he'll preach all day long. It's a partnership, not a vendorship meaning essentially. You're not enabling them just to sell your software. If you try to enable an agency to sell your software, it will quickly get muddied in the sense like we mentioned, having partnerships under marketing, this is one of the benefits of that is it won't be as muddied as if it were under sales.

[00:15:55] And then of course the CRS and the heads of sales will argue. That point, but it can go both ways. You can definitely have success with a very sales and revenue driven program, but I believe strongly from the start from the Genesis, having an under marketing will do much more favors, especially when you have an ICP or an IPP, an ideal partner persona like Daniel and trellis, because you got to understand, like you said, they're experts.

[00:16:20] They rely on their thought leadership. They rely on. Place in the ecosystem being above what the customer could get. So if a customer comes to trellis, they're expecting that white glove sort of treatment, and they're expecting a fast track into the stack. So if I'm a customer and I go to Hotjar first, it's a three month implementation that is going to require them a lot of, you know, customer success calls.

[00:16:45] And, you know, and Hotjar knows that it will not be as sticky as if trellis does the implementation because when trellis does the implementation. All of a sudden, all of the levers are being pulled. All of the optimizations are in place. And it becomes a stickier client. So Hotjar should want an agency in between all of their implementations.

[00:17:07] It will increase all of the metrics across the board and it'll make the product better Daniel and his team, because they're so savvy. They know your competitors inside and out too. They'll tell you, there'll be like, you know what, a feature over here, a feature over there that would get us into this enterprise account, or that would get us here.

[00:17:23] So wrapping that back into the PRM conversation, my contention, and this is from the experiences that we've had with some of your competitors in some of the early stage partner programs that are in your stage. And again, the definition is you're going after expert implementation partners. Top tier agencies.

[00:17:40] You're not going to get 500 this year. You're probably going to get 20, maybe 25 and you're going to work really closely with them. In that scenario, don't focus so much on lead tracking commission payouts. Look for LMS, look for the type of tool that will allow you to train and get certifications done.

[00:18:01] So Daniel can be your point of contact, but like you said, His sales team, his implementation team, his whoever needs to be experts in the product. So focus on building that training and curriculum and getting something that Daniel and his team really liked to come back to and absorb little bits of content here and there to get to certification, focus on that.

[00:18:25] And then once you get to 50 partners, that's where you can start looking at a bigger PRM type of scenario. Or if you're looking to scale, like we mentioned, adding freelancers where it opens you up to thousands of people, then you can say, okay, now we justify the need for the PRM. Does that make sense?

[00:18:42] Sharon: [00:18:42] That's really helpful. Can I ask another question? Yeah, you let them on a podcast then, and it should go the other way around. But that training day you mentioned and this, this question is to both of you, that training you were referring Alex to sort of our online training in your experience with these partnership programs, is that sort of bite-sized online training preferable or, or the sort of larger partner days that we see companies offering?

[00:19:07] Alex: [00:19:07] Yeah. And I'll, I'll let Daniel answer this in his terms. So I think the question, so I understand it is, is it more of an LMS, like Thinkific certification, teachable Lessonly whatever you use certification or is it, you mentioned bite-size where you're essentially getting on a call showing them this, doing a practice thing and then maybe scheduling another call.

[00:19:27] Is that what you mean? Yeah. 

[00:19:29] Sharon: [00:19:29] Yeah. So is it, is it online where they dip and dive into it as, as, and when they need to, or is it sort of quarterly. We get the partners all together and educate them all as one group, I'd 

[00:19:41] Alex: [00:19:41] say both, but Daniel, what do you like, how do you, how does your team like to be educated on really beefy products?

[00:19:46] Like Hotjar? Well, I would 

[00:19:47] Dan: [00:19:47] say it, it is sort of both right. What we'd like to do. And then within that, there's how we like to do things and then how they actually happen. So, you know, in an ideal world scenario, You know, meet a new partner and sort of share paperwork and so on. We'll do a bit of, you know, like account mapping perhaps.

[00:20:08] And then the process is, is sort of, we would do, we do do lunch and learns. And that's where we take an hour, you know, once a month with our project managers and new partners or existing partners that may have had, you know, new rollouts and so on. And there's that sort of peer to peer. You know, enablement, we think that's ideal.

[00:20:27] We're not adverse to partners kind of holding us to account. We have several that sort of say like, Hey, you guys really need to have, you know, X number of people certified at this level, you know, to maintain our status or, you know, whatever we have those sorts of arrangements. We think that that's, you know, positive, but yeah, I think that sort of hybrid model, right.

[00:20:48] Works best. And I think it works best because in peer to peer, you sort of get the feature or the functionality, but also the kind of like strategic business side, right? Like how, how your software tools and so on meet the market, meet a particular use case. And that's, that's like tremendously helpful, you know, because at the end of the day, like our whole thing is about understanding, you know, a client's business.

[00:21:14] You know, and then increasing their returns. And so we sort of need to be strategists as, as well as technologists as well. 

[00:21:21] Alex: [00:21:21] Okay. So this is really good insight. So we're learning from the agency's perspective, what they like and what they don't like. And of course I'm in the middle of, of all of this. So I, I kinda hear from other partner teams what they're doing.

[00:21:33] So my, my contention on LMS stuff, I think you have to have both you mentioned Ellen. Sort of training virtual training, plus your quarterly monthly training calls. You have to have both. So the way the partner track is what we call it should be layered. Essentially. You have your layers of it's give and take.

[00:21:53] So it's essentially like you're going to ask Daniel and trellis to jump through some hoops because you need them trained up on the software. So you're going to ask for some. There has to be a layer above that, which is what are we going to give back to you in return for that time? Every partner team has different things that they can do different reciprocity type options, and the two that are the easiest to start off with co-selling and co-marketing just because Daniel and trellis aren't professionals at hot.

[00:22:21] It doesn't mean they can't sell a service that Hotjar can support. It also doesn't mean that there should be a blockade between trellis and hot jars, current clients, because trellis is a top tier agency. So the way we like to layer this again is like, okay, well, Here's your certification journey.

[00:22:40] You're going to go through these online courses. You're going to go to this LMS registered there. You're going to take these video courses as you can do them. Meanwhile, just to make it worth your time and just to keep the lights on, we're going to do this. I don't know, expert interview for the blog, introduce you to our audience.

[00:22:59] Then on top of that, you have a co-selling layer, which would be all right. Well, while we're kind of getting to know each other, Let's see if there's an easy sell that we can work on together. It could come out of our audience. Maybe it comes out of your audience, but let's find whoever that company is.

[00:23:14] That's in a perfect spot for Hotjar and let's Cosell them together. So you have your co-selling routine and that could be software enabled. So you look at sponsors of this podcast, share work.co shout out to them. They have an awesome co-selling site. That's your basis of like, okay, well, before we do any co-marketing before we do any big events, before we go down this partnership journey, let's see what the overlap is.

[00:23:36] Let's see how many people are in your audience. How many people are in my audience and where there's overlap. Maybe there's a list of URLs that are in both of our pipelines that we could just pick up the phone right now and provide introductions to one another and get that first sale done. Training and certifications going.

[00:23:54] They're not upset that they have to go through all of this sort of obligated or obligatory sort of training because they've got that co-marketing thing that they're doing, that they got a mention in your blog and mentioned in your newsletter, they're super excited and there's actionable stuff that you're doing so that you're not forgotten about.

[00:24:12] Essentially, that could happen in the early stages. You're essentially just there, if they're too busy and they forgot about you, but you want to stay top of mind. So you run account mapping routines. And you start co-selling together. What comes out of that makes it even better, which is let's target that account.

[00:24:28] That speeds up the accreditation because now they have an account that they have to implement with you. They're going to get. But you're co selling them. So you're both in the conversations, you're you and their CS, your CS team, as well as their sales team are all in the conversation. Now they've got to speed up accreditation to get that implemented, and now they want to, because it's money now, money isn't in play.

[00:24:50]So you have that sort of layered partner track. It can be three months. It can be three weeks. It all depends on how heavy and how big the agency is. You put that into an incentive stream. And you clearly define that partner track for all new partners. This is what we're going to do month one. This is what we're going to do month two.

[00:25:07] This is what we're going to do month three. And by the time you're certified, we've already done all of this. So your team is super excited. We're engaged, you're activated urinated. Everybody's on track. 

[00:25:18] Sharon: [00:25:18] Now. That sounds great. It's very much how we think about actually onboarding customers onto our products.

[00:25:24] So we think about, you know, we make sure we deliver value to them. Then they may have to encounter some friction because there are obviously steps that customers need to go through in home onboarding onto Hotjar, but we want to make sure there's value friction. And then, and if there is any friction is definitely valued, delivered straight off this.

[00:25:41] So it sounds like it's a very similar process. 

[00:25:44] Alex: [00:25:44] Yeah, you gotta be doing stuff together and both sides have to be engaged. Both sides have to be excited about getting to the end point, getting that certification. So Daniel, anything off the top of that before we do final questions, final thoughts. 

[00:25:59] Dan: [00:25:59] No, I mean, I think, I think that I think that basically covers it.

[00:26:03] Yeah. I mean, I think with, like I said, I mean, hot jars are sort of a unique case as, as what we consider a data partner. But for, you know, a lot of like feature partners, we'll call them. You know, I, a lot of the time we kind of have to have that Frank discussion up front where it's like, Hey, you know, in the immediate term, I'm not going to really be like a hot, you know, lead gen channel for you.

[00:26:27] This is something that's going to take some time to develop. And it's really, for us just basically. You know, requirements in a particular use case. And so it is a sort of funny thing where as the agency, we do expect kind of white glove treatment from partners at the same time, we might, in some instances be doing services for the client that they otherwise would and bill for.

[00:26:52] So it is a sort of, you know, a give and take. So, but we, we think that we can provide a lot of additional value, you know, to, to, to partners. You know, the metrics of it, you know, are something that really we think take time to, to really establish. It all goes back to that fluidity that I mentioned earlier.

[00:27:12] Alex: [00:27:12] And let's end on KPIs. First-year KPIs. Sharon, do you have any KPIs picked up? 

[00:27:17] Sharon: [00:27:17] We don't, as yet, as I said, we're still in the learning phase, but we've been, we've been pleasantly surprised. I have to say in fact then I haven't shared this with you. But we've already had a thousand units. Visit is a new unique visitors come to our hotjar.com website as a result of the co-marketing that we've done with them.

[00:27:35] So, you know, we've had very early and great success. So we're very excited about what this can mean for our kids. 

[00:27:41] Alex: [00:27:41] That's fantastic. So throw out some KPIs around that. So you've got your marketing KPIs around events. So any partner sourced content should be tracked differently than just your overall content.

[00:27:56] So if you have an event, obviously you're going to look at how many people attended that event and you're going to hopefully track them through pipeline and see the overall revenue. I think what I would focus on more is I've got these partners and they're contributing this many eyeballs to hot jar.

[00:28:15] It's going to be very difficult. And if you get into the tracking of each individual through the pipeline, and then it becomes a sales and a revenue number, and then all of a sudden that will snowball out of control and your CEO will start hammering on revenue numbers, which you don't want in your first six months, at least.

[00:28:32] So. You can tie your partnership. Endeavor to speed of pipeline is a great one, right? Where you can say, you know what, it's going to be very hard to track early on because we're doing so many fluid type of engagements with these guys, but let's look at pipeline velocity. Let's look at how fast deals are flowing through the pipeline as more partner source deals come through because in reality, in most realities, A partner source deal.

[00:29:00] We'll blaze through the pipeline. It should be 50% faster through the pipeline minimum, right? That will take your average pipeline velocity down with each new partner. So as partners start referring, all of a sudden those averages come down and then your sales team can say, I mean, screw tracking revenue.

[00:29:18] If you can. Speed up my pipeline velocity, your VP of sales is going to love you. They're going to love partnerships. They're going to want you to do so much content with partnership. It did. That's a big one, the event stuff. Yes. Making sure your co-marketing getting that those brand impressions across.

[00:29:32] Yes. But speed of pipeline, total numbers around events, total show rates, chewable, just, just people and eyeballs and, and and visits. Those are two great ones to track early. I'm trying to think. Any others Dan, that you track with your other partners and like a partner memorandum, anything at all?

[00:29:48] Dan: [00:29:48] I mean, I, I think, I think that's a, that's a critical one though. How many eyes are we getting on? You know, the things that we're, we're doing together in the early stages, you know, I, I would say when we do a bit of account mapping with partners early on, and I tell them to sort of come back to me with, you know, their top fibers.

[00:30:08] You know, clients of ours and what you would like to say to them. Right. And I sort of look at, you know, the return on that micro either email campaign that we do, or, you know, the reach out that I'll do directly to the project manager associated with the account. And then if it's like a, a positive return and, and say, you know, we we've talked to six, you know, six of them and you know, four come back then it's like, okay, that's now we're feeling good.

[00:30:36] If there's really sort of nothing. You know, at the outset, we can't start a conversation, you know, with anyone that's that's I think something that we know we're going to have to work to develop, or if there's really anything there at all. I mean, ultimately, you know, our firm is agnostic on all of our partners really.

[00:30:52] Right. And sort of getting back to the, the reseller or referral type of. You know, I, I tell folks like, I'm not going to wear your polo shirt, you know? You know, that's not my bag we want to make, like, as I said before, you know, the best recommendation that we possibly can based on the data in your use case, other than how many eyes on materials and so on, I would say that's, that's the other kind of unquantifiable metric, right?

[00:31:14] Alex: [00:31:14] Yeah, I'll just end on this, make them famous. That's the whole deal. You want to highlight your partners in everything. Bring them in, make them want to reciprocate as much as possible, make them famous. And they will reciprocate the revenue will come, but focus on highlighting them, making them famous and all the other KPIs will come behind it.

[00:31:36] Give it six weeks. To a year of making them famous, focusing on that. You've been awesome, Sharon Daniel, thanks for joining. And this was great. Let's follow up in six months and see where we're at. 

[00:31:47] Sharon: [00:31:47] Thanks very much. Having a salad. Great. Thanks Dan.