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Intro: I’m Paul Higgins an ex-corporate executive term business owner who for five years struggled to grow a cloud Consulting business whilst battling a chronic disease with the help of mentors and experts I got the business model right built a sales and marketing engine and developed a high performing team that ended in a successful exit I received a kidney transplant from a mate and now on my second life I dedicate my time to helping other Cloud Consultants go quickly with less effort to enjoy life. Detecting an accent I'm an Aussie working globally for Melbourne Australia I interview successful Cloud Consultants sharing their scaling story to give you inspiration and practical tips I have dedicated experts for cloud Consultants on the show to save you time and money by working with the right people if you want to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life you're in the right place let's get started.

Speaker 1  (0:55): I'm Paul  Higgins and welcome to the Cloud Consultants Show episode number 469  today's topic is generating qualified leads through a Marketplace and you're going to learn firstly why you should be on a Marketplace and what it is how to be there and how to improve the algorithm so it picks you more than other partners and the third one is how to upsell to existing clients the various apps that are on the marketplace and in particular if you're a Salesforce partner you're going to be in for a lot of value today.

Speaker 1 (1:28): If it's your first time welcome it's great to have you here. If you like it, please subscribe and it's really for cloud Consultants that's you who consult and deploy SAAS platforms to get clients create results also if you're a regular thanks for your support always love to hear from you email me at [email protected] also suggest either a guest or a topic you'd like me to cover and check out those solo shows as well also you can get a summary in the notes that you're listening to in the app and you can also get the full transcript and other Links at paulhigginsmentoring.com forward slash podcast and this is episode 469 and before we go into the interview with Patrick I'd like to thank our sponsors the first one is the cloud Consultants Collective it's the world's only Revenue focused Collective for cloud Consultants it's peer answering business questions for free for each other and I always think that it's much better than Google and YouTube but why don't you test that yourself go and sign up for free at cloudconsultantscollective.com and the other is sendspark -  it's a fantastic personalized video platform it allows you to add the best feature of your business which is you into the communication which will help for greater close rates and you can get six months for free at paulhigginsmentoring.com sendspark.

Speaker 1 (2:50): So today's guest is Patrick. He started his career at Thomson Reuters where he worked for various Consulting and sales roles for around eight and a half years then he left there and joined an early stage adventure-backed company called fiscal note and he was the director of Business Development there and he really credits his experience as one of the most beneficial of his career and really was the incubator for what he knew then was to go and start his own business. And he then went from a fiscal note to Gartner which I'm sure you've all heard of Gartner and he led the financial services practice there for four years then he went into Salesforce and was the director of strategic banking accounts at Salesforce. So he's got some brilliant research startup and also large SAAS platform experience and then given all of the experience he decided to go and start his own company in January of 2022 after his two-year student service source. So what I'll do now is hand you over to Patrick Cronan from Invisory.co and this is episode 469. Great to have you here Patrick!

Speaker 2 (4:11): Thanks for having me Paul looking forward to the discussion today.

Speaker 1 (4:14): Yeah look I'm very excited by this so Nikolai introduced you uh to me and we had a great conversation we want to now share it with you as predominantly as a Salesforce partner there is some value here I think if you're across other platforms but in particular if you're a Salesforce partner you're going to love this. So you know always kick off with you know who your ideal client is and more importantly what problems do you help to solve for them? So why don't we kick off with that?

Speaker 2 (4:42): Absolutely and thanks again for the time Paul. So Patrick Cronan uh founder and CEO of Invisory. Invisory Paul is a platform that's been created to help isvs and services firms go to Market within ecosystems like the Salesforce app exchange uh to your point we are covering five additional marketplaces now but a big Focus will continue to be on the Salesforce ecosystem super excited for the conversation. 

Speaker 1 (5:15): So tell us a little bit like to me my words it's a Marketplace but just tell me a little bit about it you know what size there are on the on the marketplace.

Speaker 2 (5:24): Absolutely and the company too. It might be helpful to just give you a quick overview of our origin story. I had spent a little over four years at Gartner leading one of their financial services practices it was really during that time that I had seen there was a design hire from cios and ctOS to better understand what isvs or Services firms from the Salesforce ecosystem they should be leveraging for their respective use cases they struggled to get accurate Insight on which Solutions or which vendors they should be leveraging and and that's really a byproduct of the success of the Salesforce ecosystem frankly you now have over 5000 isvs you have over 2 000 SI partners that makes it very challenging for people to know on the customer side which ones to use for any of the use cases that are coming across their desk seeing that Gartner G2 captera uh we're not providing granular coverage as it relates to these ecosystems I had seen a real opportunity there and continue to think about it work on some ideating uh around the problem and how to potentially solve for it fast forward to you know post Gardener and I had moved to Salesforce where I saw this problem uh even more closely during my time there so I started to work in my free time a little bit more on this and came up with the concept of building out a Marketplace that was not transactional but really could act as a Gartner for the Salesforce ecosystem provide data-driven coverage on all of the isvs and all of the services firms so customers could quickly know which solutions they should be leveraging for the use cases that they were looking to solve for beyond that we really wanted to create an experience Paul that was different from a G2 or a cap tarot when you're you're coming in typically once every you know three to five months when that use case does come across your desk we've built some functionality into our platform that creates a much more tailored experience so customers can just pop it in on a bi-weekly basis and review uh tailored Carousel that is surfacing for them isvs or Services firms that are the most relevant for their particular industry sector for their job title their business unit so our goal has always been Drive Automation and create more of a repeatable process and reason for customers to come back in and engage and stay up to date on sis or new isvs that might be able to help their business create more business value that that's derived from the Salesforce platform.

Speaker 1 (8:34): So from the you know the demand side from the client side obviously we've got Stand alone companies that are looking for either a you know an isv solution or an is solution but do you also have Salesforce Partners themselves also looking for an isv provided to or a particular apps to sell to their clients so as on the demand side is it you know if I got it right is it like two key clients I suppose sitting on that client side the demand side.

Speaker 2 (9:06): Yeah it's a great question and it's really broken out into three personas. So you respond on you've got the Salesforce and customers who are looking to identify the most relevant isv or Services partner uh and then you also have both the isvs and the services firms that are looking to identify the most relevant customers to sell into. So that's really how you would think of breaking out our three personas. Now any Salesforce customer can create a free profile. Come into the Invisory Marketplace and search for or receive intelligent recommendations on isvs or Services firms that may be most relevant and then we are capturing all of that intent data activity whether it's a customer clicking into the profile of an SI or it's a customer searching for I'm looking for a cpq Consulting partner. We are capturing and providing that in a real dashboard view for either our isv or Si customers and because of the granularity of that end user's information who is you know providing that intent data they receive the name the email the company the job title and the business unit of that Salesforce end user and can perform lead gen Outreach by reaching out directly to that individual and you know stating that they notice that they might be interested in you know a cpq partner right so that's some.

Speaker 1 (10:49): Great so let's just dive in because I think most of you listening at the moment are probably you know Salesforce you know is Partners right so and I think you said this split is roughly about 40 percent of the current surge volume is for that so you know as as a partner you know we're all looking for more self-generated leads like Salesforce are great but they don't always provide them in the right time they don't always provide them with enough notice so it's always great to have another source right. So I'm a let's say I'm in financial services I'm looking for a partner and let's say I'm looking for a partner up in the US right as an example so just take us through what the experience would be like or what are the key things that the client the Salesforce client is is putting into the platform to get closer to picking the right is?

Speaker 2 (11:24): Yeah it's it's a great question Paul and it's it it's cut into a couple of different flavors for that end user. The first would be they can rely on those intelligent recommendations pop into their Invisory account and just look to see who has been filtered through and recommended to them as relevant prospective partner all their profile details you know our advisory data-driven algorithm scoring uh that particular SI firm that would be the first way. The second way would be the End customer could do a keyword search for something like the example I mentioned earlier you know your top uh cpq consulting firms right and then from there they can sort by either most relevant or by highest advisory score that have cpq coverage. The third way we've actually created a tailored connector feature where end customers can answer a short 15 question survey within the platform once our system intakes those survey results it's taking those responses and matching them up to our algorithm with the most relevant consulting firms based on the way the customer has answered those particular questions so it's a very seamless process for customers to take this large group of 2300 Consulting partners and narrow it down to a short list of closer to five to ten and then from there the customer can reach out or if one of those you know five to ten uh partners that surface is a customer of ours they're going to receive that intent data feed and have the ability to know that a customer is filled out a survey and they're interested in looking for that type of Consulting partner.

Speaker 1 ( 13:47): Yeah great great so it's yeah so it's good it allows proactivity by you the partner to go see who's searching in your particular area, but it also provides a value so as far as you know brand awareness and you know I suppose being picked up by the algorithm more than not. Like what are some key things that Salesforce Partners should do on Invisory I should say to be selected?

Speaker 2 (14:19): That's a great question Paul and a couple of important things for partners to consider you know first would be ensuring that you know they have all of their projects completed up to date and they're reporting them correctly to the Salesforce isv and Si team that's collecting all those projects completed. Another would be you know trying to certify as many team members as possible. One of the inputs of our algorithm in assessing SI Partners is certifications by employee not just overall certifications of the firm and we did that intentionally Paul because we found there are many firms that advertise that they have 100 certifications but those 100 certifications might be split across five people right so customers want to know how many certifications per employee a particular partner has and we have found that it's also a big value add because if you're certifying your sales team at a partner as an example there is more likelihood that you're not going to run into issues with disagreements about scope or things being over committed to during Discovery conversations uh so there's a lot of value in certifying as many of the team members as possible. Other factors would be continuing to add different areas of product expertise or industry sector expertise we find that the partners who have very robust coverage in those different areas. Very strong csat scores, very strong reviews that have been provided within the app exchange we find with that additional coverage they're able to cast a wider net right and ensure that a customer looking for any of the many things they may have or will be they're able to surface in that result list of areas that are of Interest.

Speaker 1 (16:33): Yeah so you know I work with Salesforce Partners at the moment and one of the key things I'm working with them on is to actually you know be more a niche or niched or you know be more pick a vertical right because you know we all know the saying that you know you can't stand for everybody and everything right and especially if you're I suppose on your way up as you get bigger as a Salesforce partner. I know that you can then have multiple verticals but I always suggest that you you know null one first. How does that play out with what you just said?

Speaker 2 (17:07): Yeah it's a great question and all it really means for that SI partner is if they've decided not to let's just say they really want to stick with coverage for marketing Cloud sales cloud and commerce Cloud all that means for them is you know they will not be surfacing when a customer is is looking for service cloud. So it it really just lessens the overall opportunity that could be generated for them as part of the platform. But from a pure scoring standpoint no one is being dinged as part of our algorithm and and I actually very much agree with with your comments Paul on not trying to promote yourself as a partner that has expertise in a certain area just for the sake of promoting it yes I actually would argue that that's very detrimental to the ecosystem and to customers and so I should clarify that point to say there's the one side of it which is the more product areas you're covering the more industry sectors you're coming more likelihood you you will surface but it will not impact if you decide to just focus on three key Cloud product areas one industry vertical anytime someone's coming in for one of those three product areas or that industry vertical you still will surface office and your score will remain you know very very strong as long as those other factors we we mentioned are are accompanying your profile.

Speaker 1 (18:42):  Is there any place in the algorithm for customer reviews so past experiences on the platform does that at all Impact this score?

Speaker 2 (18:50): Yeah it's a great question and so this has been a really interesting one for us because there's different ways to look at reviews right. You could look at it from a just straight line perspective of how many of these Partners have received five star reviews or you can click into the actual text using NLP and try to surface even more granular insights from that review text. We think it's important to do the latter right and identify areas where an SI may have received you know a four-star review but there might have been a call out of customer success and responsiveness lacking right. That's an important thing for a customer to know about. On the other side of it there might be a three star review that is absolutely glowing that could have been in air right a person made a mistake so we do think it's important and we'll continue to use NLP to identify patterns within the text the surface as reliable of insights as we can for the End customer side to review yeah and all of that.

Speaker 1 (20:07): Yeah sorry Patrick just in case people don't understand know what NLP in this context means because I'm sure it's not neuro-linguistic programming like what I think NLP is. what's NLP mean in this sense?

Speaker 2 (20:22): Yeah right so Natural language processing.

Speaker 1 (20:25): Yeah right like on the client side again like are there particular size of companies particularly industries that you know is the 80-20 rule at the moment on the platform. Just give us a bit of a context is to you know um what the client the end clients are looking like at the moment.

Speaker 2 (20:46): Yeah right yeah absolutely. You know we've seen a big push I would say from industry verticals like Financial Services like healthcare and Life Sciences. Consumer has been very strong we're starting to see more in the manufacturing Industrials um I would say at the moment the two biggest or consistently the most popular verticals for us as far as activities concerned have been financial services and hls which is an interesting one right because they are two of the most heavily regulated industry sectors. A lot more complexity there is oftentimes more likely a need to bring in a partner who specializes in one of those verticals so we shouldn't be that surprised by that Paul from our perspective um given people are really trying to ensure they're doing the things that need to be done right versus trying to do any of this work in-house.

Speaker 1 (21:48): And you know you're listening to Patrick and you're thinking is this you know worth me getting on this platform right, is there you know any on the other side the the is Partners is there any attributes you know are they all you know 200 plus seat Partners or is there a mix? Just give us a bit of an indication of who's on the platform from the supply side at the moment?

Speaker 2 (22:10): It's really I'd say closer to you know 90 end user for the moment. We probably have about 10 percent of Partners who will come in and it's difficult to know Paul if they're coming in just to you know test out the platform in our algorithm to see for themselves how it meets expectations versus their perspective on a solution that they're very well versed in. Or if they are actively working on projects where they're looking for something that may be a good fit for a prospective customer and they're actually using our platform to identify solution recommendations. But ninety percent is and customer activity so we would expect that that will continue to be the the heavy majority of the overall engagement activity.

Speaker 1 (23:05): Yeah okay and the way that people so you know once again I'm thinking okay this is great I want to search I want to get in there and see what people are searching for how do they sign up you know how does the process work?

Speaker 2 (23:22): They can actually come to Invisory.co they can book time on our Calendly and schedule a 15 to 30 minute meeting you know with us and we can get them set up very quickly from that standpoint Paul it's entirely free for them to go in and sign in as the owner of a particular profile or or a SI Partners profile within the the platform. They will just have to subscribe if they're looking to get access to any of the buyer intent data to track what end users are are looking at and what may be most relevant so they can uncover lead gen opportunities. So it is very much something that we love - having those conversations even if you know SI partners are not looking to do the subscription, we still enjoy the conversations and helping them get set up as a free user both to leverage it for their own use cases as well as provide feedback to us and if they think there are any areas that they would challenge as far as how we scored their firm within our Marketplace.

Speaker 1 (24:35): Yeah great and look we'll have all the links in the show notes but it's home dot i n v i s o r y dot Co. But it'll be in the show notes if you want to jump in quicker you can do that and we're listening to episode 469 Patrick Cronan. So on the let's say that I'm a Salesforce partner and I'm looking for an app solution for one of my clients right so how does that scenario play out?

Speaker 2 (25:04): I’d say that's where we think Paul the 10 of the the SI usage and activity is coming from within the platform. And frankly I think there are so many apps now to cover that it would make sense for them to pop in quickly and Leverage The Invisory Marketplace to ensure that there aren't any new apps that they haven't been aware of or that have scored very well that are worth doing some evaluation on just given they want to ensure each of these Partners when they're working with the customer obviously they're providing very strong project outcomes on the delivery side using our platform is a great way for them to quickly surface any particular new isvs or apps to bring into a project to ensure that successful delivery and it's a very simple process for them right .They can just create that free profile and come in and engage you know very seamlessly and quickly if they want to kick things off with us we're always happy, the team and I are always happy to jump on calls and walk them through that setup process. But it is a very quick two-minute process and and then they can start searching engaging within the marketplace to surface any you know relevant isvs for prospective use cases.

Speaker 1 (26:31): Right and from the apps perspective is it both new so I8 sorry what's already in existence in the marketplace itself right but is it also the ability to find someone to build a solution that doesn't exist does it cover both or is it just covering one aspect at the moment?

Speaker 2 (26:49): That's a really good question Paul and something that we've thought a lot about we are not currently doing that. We are currently only providing coverage of all of the existing apps and Consulting Partners from the Salesforce ecosystem that could change over time right but today that's our comprehensive coverage.

Speaker 1 (27:11): Yeah and look if you are listening and you've got a need for that please reach out to me because I do know a lot of great isvs that are building apps in different parts of the world so I can certainly help you in that. But for existing apps I think you know this is a great platform for that and and what I really love is you know my background at Coca-Cola was always you know we we had lots and lots of clients and we're always trying to look to sell more products to existing clients right and I think this is a brilliant way if you see us a a gap or an opportunity you're trying to look to get more revenue from your existing client now this is a great way to do that because the solution could be sitting there you're blissly unaware of it all of a sudden you've got the solution and it just makes it so much easier to get more Revenue which we know is a great way to build our overall revenues to get more revenue from existing clients so I think it's a really really smart opportunity that you know you're listening to you're getting your heads up before a lot of the market does so you're going to benefit from that. And as far as your next let's say a couple of years right let's sort of take a a fast forward view for Invisory. Where do you see it sort of playing playing out what's what's the vision for the business what what do you what do you hope to have in in two years time?

Speaker 2 (28:33): We have closed on our first acquisition which we announced where we call so we've just about finished the integration of the GTM guides business. The founder Mike Davis has been phenomenal uh his CEO Sienna Quirk came in and she's now our VP of marketing, also been phenomenal so we'll continue to be acquisitive. We are in the process of of looking at a couple of opportunities and you'll probably hear some some news soon Paul on some additional acquisition activity that that we're pursuing and our strategy has always been look for services businesses where we like the founders and we feel confident that we can build a product around their services deliverables that can be automated right and at the core of our business is go to market it's go to market for isvs it's go to market for consulting firms we exist us to help these customers sell more within Cloud marketplaces and so when you think about two years out, it's us expanding our coverage to AWS to gcp to Azure to servicenow to HubSpot. Those are the sixth in the near term Paul that we're covering and we're actively evaluating additional marketplaces that will expand our coverage. The goal remains the same though. Right ecosystem by ecosystem you have isvs that are looking to better connect and increase their brand awareness and go to market more effectively, and you have sis that are looking to do the same thing. So we really exist to support customers on each side of of that Dynamic.

Speaker 1 (30:28): Yeah yeah it's it's brilliant and look into why you know our community which is a cloud Consultants communities is similar in a way that it's there to support all of the partners and there are some isps but mainly the partners to actually learn from each other and we're platform agnostic like you just said so you know it's no matter you know for a Salesforce partner, a HubSpot partner, ultimately the B2B Marketplace is or the way that you go to market is very similar. What where I think this is hugely complementary is it actually brings some data and it actually starts to make it easier to generate those leads outside of your vendor right. So a lot of the things that you're doing you might be doing it on LinkedIn, you might be doing on other things - continue to do those but this is an additional opportunity and as your algorithm gets a lot better you'll get better quality leads because as we all know you know getting leads is great but when they're 90 unqualified that's not a lot of fun whereas you know the quality of the lead is going to be so much higher through this so I think it's brilliant. We've just once again it's episode 469 it's Patrick Cronan from Invisory.com and all the links will be in the show notes. So what we'll do now Patrick is go to the rapid fire. You ready for the four questions and quick responses?

Speaker 2 (31:48): Absolutely. 

Speaker 1 (31:49): All right let's do this so the first one is what are some daily habits that help you scale Invisory.com?

Speaker 2 (31:56): Yeah I'd say I am religious Paul about a 5 30 a.m workout every morning that really helps me get energized for my day. I like to get online early and ensure that I have good awareness over each of the meetings that I have for that day, I'm prepared for them. It's also a time when as you can imagine we're in startup mode you know we just added our 18th employee so we're still very very small right and there are constantly different people reaching out about different things, so once 9 A.M comes it's hard to have a free moment and really just focus and plan and strategize your day for your day so I I really find that time in the morning is a great time to just catch up on administrative work, get organized for my day. And without the morning workout I will say I've had those days where I miss it the day is is very different that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (32:56):bYeah yeah yeah yeah, it's perfect, and the next one is you know how do you find out more information is the founder and the CEO of the company to scale it?

Speaker 2 (33:08): I follow a number of different organizations and I've found product marketing Alliance is a great organization. If folks aren't already they should check that out. Pavilion is another one that you know we're an active supporter in and always great content coming from the Pavilion team. Sam Jacobs is great. You know I would also say from directly from the partner programs of all these platform companies you know we've spent the most time with the Salesforce partner program and their leadership team has been so incredibly supportive of the Invisory team and we learn so much from each conversation bad Salesforce partner account team incredible you know how much you can get from one conversation as far as learning so we are actively following and trying to learn as much then and keep a pulse on everything that they're releasing right because they are the true thought leaders of this ecosystem and there's a ton for us all to learn and and try to capture from them.

Speaker 1 (34:21): Yeah great and the next one is uh if we could grant you one wish for Invisory.com what would it be?

Speaker 2 (34:28): I would say unlimited salespeople 

Speaker 1 (34: 32): Brilliant well there's uh there's a cue for that but I'll put you up the top. The last one is you know what you know now right, what would you have done differently even what you know now?

Speaker 2 (34:45): I think the only thing it's something I've thought a lot about the only thing we would do differently Paul is I would say we probably would have gotten into Market even more quickly. We had a strong feeling that there was a big problem, a big gap in this area and I founded Invisory in January of 2022 and we waited about eight and a half months before we actually launched the product. We spent a lot of time refining it, we spent a lot of time doing empathy reviews ensuring that we really had a tight product Market fit while the entire time we felt very convinced and confident that we did and we were correct so I would say the only thing that that I wish we would have done differently is take that to the market even earlier than we did.

Speaker 1 (35:44): Yeah and it's it's easy in hindsight but yeah if you're listening there and you're you know about to launch a product yeah progress not Perfection is a good way to do it. So you can find out more about Patrick in the business like I said is home dot Invisory dot Co. It'll be in the show notes. But you know well done for what you've created. You know it's always good to sit on the research side so you know Gartner and then you went into the company side but there's nothing like actually building your own business and you know your 18 employees now got you know a massive opportunity on upside which is 5 000. You've got you know 2.3 for the partners themselves. There's enormous upside here and this is going to really benefit you as a partner so at the moment as a Salesforce partner it's going to benefit you but as you heard Patrick say if you're you know an AWS Azure if you're a partner it's coming to a town near you very soon so um it's great news and well done for what you've created for what is a fantastic industry to be in.

Speaker 2 (36:53): Well thank you for that Paul and thank you so much for the time today. It's been great to chat with you and really looking forward to hopefully joining sometime again soon.

Speaker 1 (37:03): All right, brilliant well we'll uh hold you to that thanks Patrick 

Speaker 2 (37:06): Thanks Paul 

Speaker 1 (37:08): What a great interview by Patrick and I really encourage you to go and do that you know five minute set up. Also book the call because this is the way of the future using Ai and the algorithm to find the right or help the client find the right partner. And if you're on the platform you're you know upping the odds, share on what you have found and what you really liked about Patrick on LinkedIn. Just take a photo of the podcast would be great and share it and thank him also. Share it with your peers especially if you're a Salesforce partner. Now share with the other peers as well to get them on the platform because everyone loves a friend like you for doing that. Check out our solo shows as I said, and if you're scaling your Cloud Consulting business and you want to know whether you've got the right pillars in place, you can go and find out with our free ebook just go to paulhigginsmentoring.com/blueprint to get your free copy today. And please please take action to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life a lot more.

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