Hey channel insiders, welcome back for another episode of channel insider partner POV, your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the IT channel. All to help you make better business decisions. I'm your host Katie Bavoso and my guest today is the new chief marketing officer of Jessel Systems, Kelly Knuckles. In talking to Kelly, I could tell she has such a wealth of knowledge, information, and expertise in channel marketing.
Not just because it's where she spent the last two decades of her career, but also because of the way she's able to interpret her own personal experience with all the attention she's been getting since becoming chief marketing officer over at Jessele. You'll hear how this is impacting the way she wants to connect with customers. Plus, we're going to get to see her puppy. She's literally asleep on my bed. Oh, she's like, "Hello. I'm so happy to be here." Oh my goodness.
And what's her name? Macy. Macy. Hi, Macy. Well, this is going to be the entire podcast and video now is just Macy. Thanks for coming, Mace. Thank you so much for being here. And I have to say a slew of congratulations to you. Almost one month for you at Jessal. Yeah, it's awesome. It's a really fun year to be here. Tons of transformation happening and a really exciting first few weeks. Yes, I bet. Especially starting at the beginning of the year.
It's just a lot of excitement. So, I hope you've been sleeping. I hope you've been hydrating. All the New Year's resolutions. Let's back up a little bit and start by talking about Jessal. It traditionally on paper you would call it a VAR, but for you, you see it as really important to give it a different title. Can you kind of walk me through what Jessal is and who you typically serve? Yeah, absolutely. And um yeah, you're right. I think that in the channel as a whole, a lot of solution providers like Jesselle called themselves Vars, but I don't hear that term as much anymore.
And that's not just for us, but for everyone. Um there was this period of time where everyone was a your trusted advisor, your technology advisor. And um and it was more of the time when bars solution providers um had a full portfolio of things they sold. They would have a line card with ton of partnerships and a ton of products and they expected clients to just go, "Oh, that's the one I need or this is what I want." But technology, the just the magnitude of technology has drastically changed.
So what solution providers can offer to their clients has had to shift. you had to become experts in certain things so that you could actually provide you know great business outcomes for your clients. So for me now it's moved from this VAR solution provider trusted advisor to more of an advocate for your for your customers knowing what they need and proactively researching that for them. And speaking of knowing what they need, Jessal serves a lot of clients in the federal sector.
Can you talk to me a little bit about the challenges that come with that? Yes. Um, working in federal is is drastically different than working in the commercial um segment particularly you just clearances involved everything working in federal and government. Uh, lots of segments of the public sector as well. Uh, it takes a lot of leg work. It takes a lot of expertise and understanding and um truly just uh background evaluations uh in order to get to even have conversations.
So when you start to form those relationships, you keep them for a very long time. We we work very hard with our federal clients to make sure they're happy and have really successful projects. So, as I mentioned, you've been at Jessal for about a month as the new chief marketing officer, which is really exciting in the position itself, but prior to coming here, you worked at IBM in their marketing department. Can you tell me what you learned at one of the largest technology vendors that is active in the channel?
How did that prepare you for coming to work for what's now a solution provider? Wow. Um, I love that question. So, I actually worked at a solution provider before I worked at IBM as well. So, at IBM, I I loved being able to support a business partner in ways that I knew they needed it because a lot of times marketing and support team, sales teams at big OEMs like IBM have their own goals and their own sets of targets and they don't necessarily align with the business partners.
So, one of the one of the things I like to do at IBM was making sure everything that I needed to do aligned with the business partner needs and and how they could both be successful. Um, for me it's everything that happens in the channel needs to be mutually beneficial and everyone has an agenda. So, how can we come together and make those align have a great roadmap to where everyone can be successful in the end. So from a marketing perspective, mine was not necessarily talking about certain products or certain solutions, but understanding what a business partner was great at, what their customer set was looking for, what they were seeing trends in.
Um, a lot of vertical expertise. You know, you talk about certain products and saying, "Oh, we've got this great new product. What do we, you know, how many customers can we go sell it to?" Um, but certain business partners really have great expertise in one vertical. they may sell into health care or financial markets. So, we obviously are strong in federal. Um, but really getting to know the business partner and making sure what you're sharing with them and how you're enhancing how they do business works for them.
Kelly, before we started recording, you were saying that you're getting a lot of attention lately, ever since starting your new position at Jessal. Can you talk to me about what that experience has been like and what's your reaction to it? It's wild. I mean I I have been here a month and I really think starting on day day two or one. Um it was very shortly after I changed my title on LinkedIn. I started getting inundated with emails and phone calls and text messages.
Um people going not people that I know you know not congratulations on your new role. Hope you have a great year you know look forward to work working with you. It was people that I've never met before trying to sell something and I am so new into the role I don't even know what how to log into my email yet to to receive to receive the emails. But it's funny, you know, the people that that I have actually responded to were the people who gave me space and said, "Hi, you know, congratulations.
I see you're new at Jessal and you know, here's what I do." And once you have your feet under you and and know what your needs are, I'm here to talk to you about content management or social media scheduling or any of these needs that you might have. Um here's my contact information. If you're willing, I'll put something on the calendar next month for us to discuss once you're comfortable. Um, the people that I aren't am not willing to talk to are the ones that send an email and then I go and it's kind of demanding and I delete it and then they send another email the next day going, "Did you see this?" Yes, I did.
And I can't answer any of those questions and I don't answer them today either. Um, but it goes back to this cycle of marketing where you people don't want to be sold to. They want to be able to have a genuine conversation and connection with someone and anticipate needs and or or discuss solutions to challenges that they may have but not truly be sold to. I mean, this is, you know, this environment, marketing, technology, it's not buying shoes on Instagram.
You know, you don't need an ad to pop up when you when when you think about it. It's um you need to have a discussion about what the actual business outcome is going to be and how it's going to serve your needs better. All I can think about is the Amazon emails that come back and they're like, "We noticed that you wanted to in do this digital transformation. So, we're offering you some more things of what you've already bought that department. We know you're running low on cloud storage here.
So, would you like some more? Would you like some more? You purchased this this time last year. You might need some more." Showing up and being a friend is something that is really important for you. Just in our discussions, you've talked a lot about how you want to be a person when you show up to talk to your clients first. How do you hope to be able to influence your team to take on some of those some of those initiatives? Well, it's it's getting to know everyone.
It is forming relationships internally and externally. I I'm new here. Um and that's exciting and it's scary for um for everybody. You know what's going to change and change is not always easy for everyone. So, for me, it's getting to know the team, what they what they've historically sold, what they're comfortable talking about, what clients they serve, um, and not throwing a lot of new things on top of that. You know, as a company, we have to have a great strategy.
And so, all of course, everything we do aligns to our strategy of how we best support our both federal and commercial clients, but from an internal perspective, I need to make sure that everyone that's out in the field selling and talking to clients comfortable with the strategy. So that only comes from understanding where they sit and and what they like discussing and and what they've sold in the past. You mentioned shoes on Instagram, which now I'm waiting for my phone to send them to me immediately.
But with that in mind, what does outreach look like today in marketing? Is it that direct where you send those emails directly when it's when they're ready or is it more of a you're waiting for them to come to you? It's a little bit of both. I think the technology as a whole is has become more passive. It's informative. You know, what can you do for your business to make your business better and there's a million different types of technology that can support any set of challenges that you may have.
So, for me, it's being an educator. How can we educate our clients and and our ecosystem of partners about what we do and how we can help? but also from a global perspective talking about changes in in in the world you know what what's coming up the road like what what's impacting our infrastructures and technology as a whole cyber security threats um obviously so much is going to change and there's going to be a lot of dynamics around the election this year what is that going to have how how is that going to impact everybody but keeping everyone informed about what's to come will help them make better proactive decisions for their environment or proactive have proactive conversations with us or their other partners about what they can do to protect themselves.
You know, like they're they're out reading an article and go, I'm gonna go take that idea to my CEO and say, I'm going to change the I'm going to change how we do business and it's going to save us money and everything's going to be faster and easier. Um, and you they don't want to think like Kelly told me to do that. I figured that out from that article though that Kelly shared on LinkedIn the other day. What do you think drives a company in the channel, a solution provider in the channel to be able to sustain and what attracted you to Jessal in the first place?
Relationships. I think before I came here, um, I talked a lot to friends and mentors in the industry about the company as a whole. And the one thing that I heard over and over were what just great individuals worked for the company. um honest, trustworthy, um just always true to their word. And so for me, my success in the industry has been built truly on relationships and providing meaningful value to my vendors and distributors and the people running the product lines as well as our clients.
So that is truly truly the measure of success in an ecosystem is making sure that you're taking care of all of the people that provide value to your clients. And everything that I heard coming into this role was exactly what they do. We do. I'm here now. Part of the team. Part of the team. Is there anything you do to stay memorable with your clients? You talk about being in a postco lifestyle where it's funny because you think about we're probably seeing each other in person less, but we're seeing each other and speaking to each other a lot more just because it's become so ubiquitous to have video calls and we email all the time and really office hours are sort of between the hours of 12 a.m. and 12 a.m. specifically.
So, how do you stay and kind of cut through the noise and stay top of mind for your customers? I mean, stay relatable. I mean, we all I think that you know, oftentimes and and I face this from a marketing perspective, people are used to scripts and you know, in sales, no one wants to be sold to. And you know, when someone's working off a script, you know, when you're receiving a stock email that was sent out to a thousand people, so how can you be different?
So, I tend to I do a lot of research ahead of time. I like to make sure everyone I know I know who I'm talking to before I'm talking to them. um you know, checking them out on LinkedIn. Um being really personable on the phone. Um I always have video on um for the most part. Um and then making sure you come up with some way to to you really take the time to get to know someone. I love when people are in their home offices. Um you can see potentially their diploma on the wall and where they went to school or pointing out something that that could make a memorable connection with them.
Um, for me, um, I have a new puppy. Might have heard her at some point on this video, but she tends to show up very often on calls. Um, so it's funny when I I talk to someone, they're always like, "How's the puppy doing?" Um, but whatever you can do to make it a human connection, almost a friendship. I mean, that's what really this ecosystem is. It's it's making sure that you have great trusted connections, and those really kind of come down to being friends.
You mentioned the word ecosystem and something that really inspired me the first time I met you was you said you don't need to know more, you just have to know more people. Can you kind of walk me through what you mean by that and where does that come in handy within the channel for somebody in your position? Being a business partner has a lot to do with knowing a little bit about everything and a lot about a few things. And so when you need this ecosystem, when I say I need this ecosystem of people to be successful, it it truly is dropping hints about expertise here and there.
Um, but knowing that we have kind of an army behind us to take care of those solutions. Um, I always say and I think I've been on calls with people so many times and they'll be talking about something and and I'll go I I don't know how to answer that question, but you know what? I know someone who does and I'm going to I'm going to reach out to them and connect the two of you. But technology changes so fast and we talk aboutmemes so much in the industry.
It truly takes subject matter experts in a plethora of things to have a successful project for a client. Um, and there's no one no one in sales or at a business partner or at a vendor knows everything about any and knows everything about a project or can anticipate a client's needs. So, it's taking, you know, vendors and product experts, partners who should know the ins and outs of their client's environment and needs and challenges to come together and and really solve a b solve a business problem for the client.
So, they don't have to think about it. Clients should never have to really think about what products they're buying or an implementation strategy or a maintenance project line to to have a successful project. we should be doing that for them ahead of time. And kind of going further into the vendor space when from a marketing perspective, where are you seeing vendors successful in supporting their channel partners? Is there anything that you can speak to there about what benchmarks, what bars should they be meeting when it comes to supporting you as CMO at Jessal?
H I love this. Um I've been talking to everyone about this so far. Um, standing out isn't easy at all. I mean, we just talked about the ecosystem so much. There's a huge ecosystem of vendors and distributors and partners and service providers and MSPs and you name it. And how do you stand out? And the key to that is having really close working relationships with your vendors and making sure that they're that you are top of mind for them. Showcasing your expertise so that when they have a client or they have a product that fits where fits your model and where they feel like you could be successful, they're talking to you first.
So recognition is key. Um other things is just working together you know creating that mutually you know successful environment where goals align and you know the the you know the plan is aligned. You know we I think we talked at the beginning of this um a little bit about my role here is new and creating a plan to get going for the year is really hard when you're in a new environment. Um, I I hear it left and right like what are we going to do next and how are we going to go about it?
What I really want to do is work with our vendors. You know, we've had these great we have these great vendor relationships, IBM being one, Dell Technologies, like how can we work with them to align with their goals to be successful together. Um, another thing they can do is really support the full sales cycle. You know, I love seeing new collateral um competitive uh intelligence so that when we're out selling, we know how to discuss a product against another product.
Then pre and post sales engagement, um regular health checks, um jumping on the calls with clients so that we're know we they know we're in sync um that Jessal is in sync with the vendor themselves. So after everything that we've spoken about, Kelly, how does Jess Gal differentiate itself in the market? We like to see ourselves as extension of our clients team. You know, truly uh truly a part of their organization and staying active in projects and strategy with them so that they never have to reach out.
It's it's not we need something. We're always there for them as an extension and providing expert expertise across all product lines um and anticipating their needs. Are there any vendors or solutions that in the moment you'd like to highlight? I feel like we've talked about automation for years, but people are actually starting to implement um automations in more than just like accounting and HR processes. It's becoming more widespread across organizations.
So for me um the IBM automation portfolio, Turbonomic and Stana, um there's a couple of new acquisitions in that line. Um they're really peing a lot of interest and solving a lot of challenges for our customers. And for anyone out there, the IT buyers, the potential clients in this space that would like to contact Jessal, how can they reach out to you? How can they get involved with your team and learn more? Yeah, you're more than welcome to go to our website, which is just.com.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn directly. It's the best way to get in touch and I feel like um I love keeping up with our entire ecosystem there. Thanks again to my guest Kelly for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening to this episode of Channel Insider Partner POV. We put out a new video and podcast every Thursday. You could find that on channelinsider.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube page at channelinsider_news and trends.
You can also subscribe to our podcasts on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, YouTube Podcast, the list goes on and on. And don't forget, if you want to be a guest on Channel Insider, PartnerP, or you've got a question for me or one of my guests, just email me at partnerpov channelinsider.com. Thanks again for joining me. I'm Katie Bavoso, and I'll see you next time.
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