Partnering for Success: Building Trust and Specialization with Joseph Khalaf
Welcome to the IAMCP Profiles and Partnership, the podcast that showcases how Microsoft partners and IAMCP members boost their business by collaborating with other members and partners. I'm your co-host, Anthony Carrano. And in each episode, I'll be talking to some of the most innovative and successful partners in the Microsoft ecosystem. The International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners, otherwise known as IAMCP, is a community of Microsoft partners who help each other grow and thrive. Members can find and connect with other partners locally and globally and access exclusive resources and opportunities.
Anthony Carrano:Whether you're looking for new customers, new markets, or new solutions, IAMCP can help you achieve your goals. We'll hear their stories, learn from their experiences, and discover the best practices and strategies they use to increase customer loyalty and grow revenues. Whether you're a new partner or an established one, you'll find valuable insights and inspiration in this podcast. We hope you enjoy this podcast and find it useful and inspiring. If you do, please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to follow us on social media and connect with us on our website, www.profilesandpartnership.com, where you can find more information, resources, and opportunities to partner for success. Thank you for listening. Now let's get started with today's episode.
Anthony Carrano:But before we dive into our interview, let me ask you, what role do partnerships play in your business model and growth strategy? And how are you investing in not only the relationship, but also in the skills and resources your partners need to be successful?
Anthony Carrano:We dive into these questions and more as our guest discusses how being a member of the IAMCP has contributed to building a robust partner program and shares examples of successful collaborations that have driven significant achievements. Are you ready to join us on this journey? Then stay tuned because we have a great show for you today. Our guest is Joseph Khalaf, the president at ampiO Solutions, a Microsoft partner with numerous specializations and designations that help organizations maximize their ROI, increase employee productivity, and decrease operational cost. Let's hear what he has to say.
Anthony Carrano:Welcome Joe to the podcast today. Thanks for joining us.
Joseph Khalaf:Thank you for having me Anthony and Rudy.
Anthony Carrano:Well, well, we're looking forward to a great show, with you today. But let's start off. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role in the company.
Joseph Khalaf:Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Joe Khalaf, Joseph Califf, I go by Joe. And I'm the president of ampiO Solutions. We are a Microsoft partner. We are a solution designated in four of the six solution designations, modern, work, security, Azure infrastructure, data, and AI.
Joseph Khalaf:Based here in Dallas, Texas, we've been around for thirteen years. And I personally hail from Microsoft. I spent seventeen years at Microsoft before starting ampiO. And yeah, that's simply really what we live and breathe. Sales team always talks about drinking the Kool Aid. We drink the Microsoft Kool Aid. That's all we do. That's all we kind of want to do. We want to be very specialized. We want to be very focused and we just want to help our customers and our partners maximize their investments on software licensing, subscriptions, cloud investments within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Anthony Carrano:Now, in coming out of Microsoft and founding the company thirteen years ago, why did you start ampiO?
Joseph Khalaf:Well, there's two reasons. I'll tell you the first reason, the funnier reason, which is after I left Microsoft, I kind of didn't know what I wanted to do. And all the job offers that I received involved a lot of travel. So I was like, I'm not sure I want to do that. But really the true reason, the reason specifically for us being and starting a solution provider, a services company, is in all fairness, at seventeen years at Microsoft, I loved every minute of it, minus a couple of minutes here and there, but that's just corporate life, right?
Joseph Khalaf:I personally, and I think we in general, as a Microsoft culture, the majority of us did not really experience the value that our customers, that Microsoft customers received out of the products. We were kind of known and had this reputation of just being engineers coming up with products and features and designs sitting behind monitors. And then they push them out to the public and then they move on and go make decisions about future features, right? It's all good. It's all great.
Joseph Khalaf:I believe in the value of the products we deliver, but you kind of never experience the fruits of the labor, right? I wanted to see how customers are using this. How is it making their life better? And how can we as engineers go out in the public sphere and say, oh, you could also do this with this product and make your life so much better. And I think that's what motivated me to go out and say, I want to help customers maximize the use of these products to make their life better, to be more productive, to just enjoy these products versus do things that, we build features and we're like, nobody knows who's using these features.
Joseph Khalaf:We actually, we had this thing called SQIM when I was at Microsoft, we deployed it, nobody knew about it because it ran behind the scenes and it tracked usage data from Microsoft Office. And we were able to track what features people used and we learned, we had it out for a year. The first year we had it, it still exists, but the first year we had it out, we realized Excel specifically, people barely click on five or six buttons in that product. And it is one of the most feature rich products, you know, back in the day at least out there, but nobody used the additional features in there. And I was like, I want people to do that.
Anthony Carrano:Now, what role do partnerships play in ampiO's business model and growth strategy?
Joseph Khalaf:Yeah, so, I mean, that's a good question because, let me tell you the partnership deal. When I first started this, I hailed from a non sales world, right? Like I was an engineer at heart. I might be guilty of still writing some code today, PowerShell and otherwise, which is, let's not get into that because that's not a good idea for somebody trying to run a business. But besides that, didn't know, I didn't know, and the people that joined me when we first started ampiO, we didn't know how to sell.
Joseph Khalaf:We just knew how to engineer. And that was difficult. Like it's it's not for the faint of heart to start a business, it's tough. And we built partnerships based on relationships. A couple of people that I used to work with at Microsoft came to me and said, hey, we heard you started a company and I work for this company.
Joseph Khalaf:So this is how the partnership model evolved. And we became very partner centric, very partner driven. We started focusing or we didn't focus, we didn't put any more effort into having direct clients. And we learned that, especially it's very true today based on how Microsoft is pushing us. We learned that specialization is not easy for small companies.
Joseph Khalaf:Like you can't have 10 engineers on staff and not have them be generalists, because you're tracing revenue, right? You don't want to say no to business. So this is where our partner model flourishes, which is we go in and we tell our partners, we will be your specialists in a very, very specific area. Thus, we are augmenting the portfolio of services you provide. There are certain services that you historically could not provide because you did not want to invest in the resources or in the time and effort to elevate the skill set of these resources.
Joseph Khalaf:And the answer is, you don't have to shy away from providing that. We will fill the gap. We will come in as you to fill that specialty need, specialty gap. And the reason I say Microsoft is sending us that way for those partners that are out there that have lived through this whole reimagining of the partner program, they all know that Microsoft wants specialists. They're not interested in generalists anymore.
Joseph Khalaf:They're not interested in the complexity of the technology does not allow for your traditional systems administrator that can do exchange and AD and BizTalk and SQL. No, they want a very, very, very focused specialist. That's why they call it specialization in the partner program.
Anthony Carrano:Now, it's kind of taking it like now. When did you join IAMCP?
Joseph Khalaf:I'm not sure I wanna give away my age.
Anthony Carrano:Joe, it doesn't matter. You're still, you know, still a good looking guy, Joe. It doesn't matter how old you are.
Joseph Khalaf:I think that's a better question for Rudy than me. I wanna say 2016.
Anthony Carrano:Okay.
Joseph Khalaf:It must have been 2016 or 2017. 2016, I think, or maybe a year before. I've been a member for a little over ten years, nine to ten years for sure.
Anthony Carrano:Okay. So it was shortly after you had started your business. And this is the reason why I asked that is then is because, you know, being as a, you know, as a company that sells and works, you know, with Microsoft partners. How has being a member of IAMCP helped you in building your partner program?
Joseph Khalaf:So I think it goes back to that specialization conversation. I think originally, I think the first couple of years I was an IAMCP member, I sort of questioned it simply because I was like, oh, I'm just networking, but a lot of these partners kind of compete with me and why am I talking to them? I don't want to give away the sauce and I don't want to tell them anything about me. But as that partner model evolved, I've learned that IAMCP is actually a very, very critical organization for our business. Why?
Joseph Khalaf:Because we are specialized. I need trusted partners within that organization that I can hand customers over to. Trusted, right? I trust these organization members to just give them my customer or give them my partner and say, you talk to them about Dynamics. I know that I could trust you to do both a good job and that you're not going to encroach on my business, right?
Joseph Khalaf:And they're all specialized, right? We still compete. I mean, this is not to suggest that we don't compete, but competition is good and healthy. But we also fill gaps for each other. And that is very important.
Anthony Carrano:So can you share an example of a successful partnership you've established and like what made it work? Because I know you've got several.
Joseph Khalaf:Oh, I can share.
Anthony Carrano:And you don't have to give the name of the partner or the customer either. And if you just want to-
Joseph Khalaf:Oh, yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, I can share. I can think of one right off the top of my head right now, a couple actually, but the first one I can remember is we have a partner that's not part of IAMCP, obviously we're partner driven. And we went in and did a huge Azure migration for them.
Joseph Khalaf:And we found out that they have Dynamics. And the partner was like, Joe, we need you to migrate their Dynamics instances and infrastructure. I was like, we don't do that. We know nothing about Dynamics. And the partner was like, well, I don't either. He goes, I don't want them to go shop it around. That wouldn't do us any good. Like, I want to keep them within my purview. So I reached out to a couple of IAMCP partners that do Dynamics. And I talked to them about it and they're like, we'll take it over.
Joseph Khalaf:I introduced the IAMCP partner, the Dynamics partner, to my partner that's not part of IAMCP. They ran with it. I completely disconnected from it because I don't want to have anything, we don't want to have anything to do with Dynamics. Not because it's bad, but it's just, we don't have these skillset, we don't have the capacity. And tell you what, the non-IAMCP partner that who came to us with the customer, they just came back and I think they thank me every other time I see them. They're like, man, this partner knocked it out of the park. They moved Dynamics over to Business Central. And I mean, it was like a win-win, win-win situation.
Joseph Khalaf:And the beauty of that is that that partner, that Dynamics partner is located in SoCal, has sent us a bunch of work because in this organization, reciprocity is very important and we all live and die by it. We reciprocate, and that's the beauty of this organization.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm. Mhmm. So you've talked about this a couple of times where you're you know, you've got your specializations areas that, you know, you guys are best in class in. You're also the part of it with a community where there is gonna be some competition. There's a value then with partnerships.
Anthony Carrano:How do you navigate all that to just to to make it work? Make it work both for ampiO, make it work for the customer, make it work for the partner, and kind of balancing all that out? What what what do you see is is is key?
Joseph Khalaf:Look, to me, and maybe this is personal, but maybe it's just the culture of ampiO, but to me, emotional intelligence is of the utmost importance, right? Like when I go and I'm hanging out with individuals at the IAMCP meetings that compete with me, I'm good. It's like being across the net from your opponent. And hey, if he gets a better shot and it's a winner, then I'm just going to give him a thumbs up. It's a good shot.
Joseph Khalaf:Like, what am I complaining about? So I don't have a problem with the competition piece within IAMCP. And really, I could not be more proud of the members of this organization because they're all mature and professional and emotionally intelligent. And so they do the same, right? If we're competing against the same goal, same customer, and they're like, yep, they went with you because you provided them A, B and C, good for you, I'm going to learn from you, right?
Joseph Khalaf:But in all fairness, to be fair too, you'd be surprised that we don't run into that often at all. Like it's a huge marketplace. It's a huge marketplace. And while I know that we talk a lot about how many Microsoft partners are out there, believe me when I tell you that the ratio is not sufficient. Like I guarantee you the market could probably accommodate more partners because it's a huge marketplace.
Joseph Khalaf:So we've literally never run into a competitive situation with an IAMCP partner ever, where we were in at the same customer and we're like, uh-oh, Rudy's competing with me. That's never happened.
Anthony Carrano:Well, if Rudy's competing with you, it's kinda, I don't know. Are you getting into marketing, Joe? What's going on here?
Joseph Khalaf:I'm not sure I wanna get into that.
Anthony Carrano:That's fair.
Joseph Khalaf:I'm gonna leave it up to you guys to do that.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. Because I I I know we're not getting into, you know, with SharePoint and all the other many security and all the many things you're doing. So, no. That's fantastic. Rudy?
Rudy Rodriguez:Well, you know, since you bring up our our competition, Joe, there's a there's a there's a lot of things that, you know, in selling through partners, it's a complex environment. It's a complex environment. You're dealing with people and businesses and such. So what strategies have you found to be most effective when selling through partners?
Joseph Khalaf:You know, in all fairness, Rudy, I don't know if that's probably one of our Achilles' heels is that we go in with no strategy sometimes. We go in and go, man, I hope they like me, right? But in all fairness, the selling through partners is all about trust, is all about the relationship. And I'm telling you, and this is not, again, we've never run into this with IAMCP, but the other partners that we sell through, as painful as it was, especially for somebody that is responsible for revenue, right? We have had to walk away from partners before because there's no trust, they don't share our values, they don't share our, you know, nothing that we do.
Joseph Khalaf:There's nothing in common. It's a relationship, right? It's a marriage for lack of a better term. And this is the advantage of IAMCP, is that for you to be a member of this organization, you either live and die by the values or you ship out. And Rudy, I know you probably were involved in this because I remember this a couple of years ago.
Joseph Khalaf:We had a situation where one of the partners was involved in some really unethical activities. And guess what? They were shipped out. This is the beauty of this organization. We don't want these types partners.
Joseph Khalaf:So the reason I say it's no strategy, it's because it really isn't a strategy. Our core values at ampiO match the core values of the IAMCP organization, and that in itself is a strategy in my opinion.
Rudy Rodriguez:Okay. You brought up something in my memory. I remember that incident. So excommunication of a partner is really tough thing to do. And, but you do it because it brings up the the point that you brought about, relationship and trust. So I know I've known you for a long time, and so I know you know how to do this. But how do you coach your people and how do you talk with other partners to foster the trust and collaboration that's necessary to secure the business and to maintain a long term relationship with those partners?
Joseph Khalaf:Yeah. So values, I don't wanna beat up on that, but values are important. I beat that drum all day long. But there's another thing I've learned over the years that is also kind of pertinent, which is it can't be always about the money. It can't.
Joseph Khalaf:Because, especially through a partner model, right? Because when you're going through a partner, you have to make concessions for everybody to be profitable. You have to, you can't, I mean, I don't think it's a secret if I tell you this. I mean, it's a business model, right? When you go through a partner, you have to discount your pricing because the partner has to also realize some revenue, right?
Joseph Khalaf:There's something called margins. And we have won huge deals by, what's the term I'm looking for here, by making concessions on earlier deals with the same customer that generated almost no revenue. But guess what? You deliver your value by letting your partner know that it can't just be about the money. It has to be about the long term meaningful relationship.
Joseph Khalaf:And if you're going to dig your heels in and say, "Oh no, I better make X amount of dollars on this job." Guess what? We're all in the business of making money at the end of the day, right? The partner might start looking for somebody else that'll provide these services at a lower cost. So I'm in a situation right now with a very long term partner that just came up to us and said, we need to talk about margins because they're a huge partner, corporate policy came down from the top. The team that we work with at this partner doesn't have control over these decisions.
Joseph Khalaf:And they just came up to us and said, Joe, we want to continue this partnership, but we have to talk about margins because a decision came down from the top that we have to improve upon those. And you know what? I'm more than happy to talk about those. So what's that term? What is it?
Joseph Khalaf:Pound foolish and penny wise?
Rudy Rodriguez:Yeah.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. Pennywise, pound foolish.
Joseph Khalaf:Pennywise, pound foolish. Like, that's definitely not what we wanna be.
Rudy Rodriguez:That's always a hard conversation, isn't it, in the concessions that you make? But margin pressures are hitting everyone right now. So that's one of the challenges. So this leads to this next question, because each partner is different that you work with. And then how do you and your team ensure that the alignment between your sales goals and those of your partners are good together?
Rudy Rodriguez:Do you have a very direct conversation with them when you first establish a relationship or is it an ongoing type of conversation with those partners?
Joseph Khalaf:Well, that's why we have a Dynamics Marketing. Because we really didn't do a good job at that for the longest time. But let me did I just was that a plug for Danemis marketing? I think it was. Look, in all honesty, we don't know how to do that.
Joseph Khalaf:We're not good at that. That's why we need to hire, I know we're laughing about it, but it's the honest truth, right? Like that's why we need somebody like Dunamis to come in and say, Hey, you got to think about something other than resizing their VM in Azure or building a Power App for their SharePoint. You got to think about the alignment. You got to think about how are you going to market with these partners and how are you aligning with them to augment their portfolio, to enable their salespeople and their workforce to evangelize your services?
Joseph Khalaf:We honestly don't know how to do that internally. And again, that's where we come in and solicit the help of other IAMCP partners that do this well, and we partner with them and collaborate with them to help each other.
Rudy Rodriguez:So can you share with us, I know you've shared one story on big success that led to a breakthrough, but have you had any success stories where you've had unexpected collaboration that led to a significant breakthrough with a customer and with that partner?
Joseph Khalaf:Oh, man. I have so many that I can't even can't even think of. Unexpected. What what do you what do you mean by unexpected?
Rudy Rodriguez:Well, somebody just surprised you and said, hey. You know, like you talked about that one where you went and got a Dynamics partner to come in and help you with a particular project. Have you had any others like that that could actually be bigger?
Joseph Khalaf:Yeah. I mean, we had one in Houston a while back where actually it was a connection from an IAMCP partner, right? It was completely unexpected. And they just said, Oh, ampiO, we hadn't done any, we hadn't collaborated or done any business with that IAMCP partner. We're just members of the same organization, that's it. We go to meetings together, we do events together. And that person referred us to one of her partners or to a partner that has a client. And I'm like, I just looked at the email. I was like, who's she referring me to? Like what, did she send the email to the wrong person?
Joseph Khalaf:And that turned out to be literally a year and a half engagement. That was completely unexpected. Just out of left field, you're like, wow. But guess what? That was really in my opinion, we had never done business without an IAMCP partner before, but I think that was a byproduct of the fact that, again, we trust each other.
Joseph Khalaf:We know that if you're in this organization, that I could call you out if you do a bad job for my client or for my partner, and we only want the best of the best of this organization.
Rudy Rodriguez:That's great. And to your point a little bit earlier, I've been around in the IAMCP since 1995, Joe, before it was even called the IAMCP. It was the National
Joseph Khalaf:You were eight, right? You were eight years old at the time?
Rudy Rodriguez:Three. Three years old at the time. Three years old. But but I was, fairly computer literate at that time, so that helped an awful lot.
Rudy Rodriguez:Anthony, I'll turn it over to you. Do you have some more questions?
Anthony Carrano:Oh, yeah. No. This oh, yeah. This has definitely triggered a lot of some thoughts and questions. Joe, one thing is, you know, have there been any moments, right, in your career, that, you know, just in the last I shouldn't say career, but in the last, you know, the with the since you founded the company or just over that journey that has reshaped your approach to partnerships?
Joseph Khalaf:Man, the moments are daily for me. And and more than and and sometimes twice on weekends too. Yeah, you know, Anthony, if there's a learning lesson here from, and when I talk about partnerships, I'm not necessarily talking about IAMCP partnerships, I'm talking about partnerships in general. There are times, as painful as it is, and it took me years to learn that, maybe because I'm a slow learner, maybe because I'm stubborn, I don't know, but there are times you have to agree with yourself that this partnership is not the right partnership. Those are the most difficult in my opinion, right?
Joseph Khalaf:It's very difficult. And this is not specific, this is actually in line with what I just talked about a few minutes ago and Rudy remembering the incident, right? Like it happened to us with IAMCP. It's a partner that has been around for a very long time. And I think it was a very difficult decision for the board to investigate the matter or the matter and then go back and say, you know what, we must part ways. And I've learned that the difficult way, well, not the difficult way, the slow way, because I refuse to acknowledge it, I guess. Breakups are hard, right?
Joseph Khalaf:It's always hard to break up, especially when you're generating revenue from that partner or from that customer. But sometimes you're not reading between the lines that that revenue is cost is not profitable, right? That was one of my moments where we had a couple of partners in the past where they were generating ungodly amount of revenue for us. But when you go dig under the hood, you realize that the profitability is almost zero, if not negative.
Joseph Khalaf:And that's one of the, that to me, that is a huge moment that happened a couple of years ago where I'm like, man, you got to cut that umbilical cord and just move on. You cannot continue to nurture a relationship that's going nowhere. And let me make sure I say, is not a I'm not suggesting that it's because it's a bad partner or it's a bad customer. It's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is because sometimes there are just no synergies, right?
Joseph Khalaf:Yeah. You can't have relation, like sometimes two people just don't gel, right? There's no synergy. So guess what? Doesn't mean one is bad. It just means that there's just no synergy and you have to accept the fact that you must move on.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah, yeah. So to kind of piggyback on that then, if you had to pick just one piece of advice, I mean, I know you probably have got a lot, but I'm gonna ask just for one for fostering lasting and productive partnerships, what would it be?
Joseph Khalaf:Honesty. There is nothing- We've lost deals because we were honest and I'm happy we did. And let me tell you what I mean. I'd hate to make it sound like I ran this through, lying through my teeth at the beginning, but in all fairness, when you're trying to grow up, when you start a business and you're struggling for revenue and you're desperate for revenue, you start making promises that you can't keep. That to me is dishonest.
Joseph Khalaf:And guess what? I've been guilty of that, right? I've been guilty of saying, oh yeah, yeah, we do this. Yeah, yeah, because I just don't want to say no because I'm desperate for the revenue. We're desperate. We need to make payroll, right? And then I learned over the years that man, that puts you in a worse situation, that costs you more than you make, right? So be honest about your strength, be honest about your weaknesses, and that's where partnerships come in.
Anthony Carrano:That's good. That's good. Now, you know, talking about like, you know, with the strengths and honesty and building, you know, good solid partnerships, how does ampiO support its partners, in building skills and resources that they need to succeed?
Joseph Khalaf:So, you know, we try to make and this is a very, like slippery slope for us, because we only make money when we build. We're almost like I had a client one time accused me of being, they said, you guys are like lawyers. I'm like, well, you're kind of right. We build you as we work. I'm not sure I can argue with that.
Joseph Khalaf:But we try to do our best. And I try to instill in all of our engineers, the specialized engineers that are really the best of the best, in my opinion at least. We have an MVP on staff, we're all certified. Anyway, the bottom line is that I try to instill with them the above and beyond mentality, which is I understand that your compensation is directly tied to your utilization, but going above and beyond for a customer sometimes or a partner that doesn't contribute to your utilization, that doesn't necessarily contribute to your pocket immediately, is a long term investment that the dividends are, they cannot be measured, but there are dividends, right? So that's how we try to support our partners, which is not to The example I would give you, I'm gonna give you a very simple example.
Joseph Khalaf:We write a statement of work, everybody knows how this works. It's not a secret. You write a statement of work, you put in as many inclusions as you can, you create as many exclusions as you can, and you go to your engineering team and you say, stick to the scope, right? Because scope creep means we lose money. Well, you say that enough and it becomes almost like a dictatorship on the SOW, right?
Joseph Khalaf:Like, no, if they ask you a question, you'd go, I'm not gonna answer that question. It's not in the inclusions. So we had to kind of shift that mentality a little bit and say, if it's not in the inclusions and it's not taking that much time, go above and beyond for the partner, for the customer. If you do it for the customer, you're doing it for the partner. If you're doing it for the partner, it translates to the customer.
Joseph Khalaf:I'm not suggesting that you go and spend twelve days doing something that's out of scope, but a little goes a long way, right? Yeah. So that's something that's very important that I have to instill in my engineering team.
Anthony Carrano:Well, outside of just being, you know, best in class on the technical side, right, and then having your engineers going above and beyond on the technical, there's actually you know, when you have these relationship with your partners, it's kind of piggybacking on that going above and beyond.
Joseph Khalaf:Oh, yeah.
Anthony Carrano:Things like training, providing marketing resources, and co branding, whatever, you know, could be any or all, you know, that you play in helping in that enabling your partners for for their success because that's, you know, at the core, that's what you know, being a, you know, as a best in class, you know, you know, micros you know, you know, Microsoft shop with all these specializations, you're helping them be successful, you know, in reaching more, you know, customers and delivering high value. So outside of the technical with things like training, marketing, etcetera, what are some things that you guys are doing?
Joseph Khalaf:Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, investing in the tools, and when I say tools, that could be marketing, branding, that could be training rep. You have to invest, you have to put time and effort into your partners. You have to deliver. We deliver for our partners or we used to at least, and we still try to do it.
Joseph Khalaf:The problem is that, well, it's not a problem, but you know, there's a lot going on, but we need to get back to it more. We used to do quarterly visits to our partners and educate their sellers, sit there and have an open, what we like to call a brown bag. We bring lunch and we chitchat about the market and we talk to them, educate them about what's hot out there and how they could go sell it and how they could go help their customers leverage these technologies, right? So we invested in that, that's investment, that's time. We invest in building collateral for our partners to go out and deliver it to their customers.
Joseph Khalaf:We call it like enablement battle cards, right? We call that battle cards. Give them that. You can't expect our partners to know every single new product or new functionality that Microsoft releases, right? And then the other thing I would say is invest in their business process also.
Joseph Khalaf:When I say invest in their business process, when you work with big partners, they have minutiae. Any big company's got internal processes that what I would like to call as a bit of minutiae, right? Like strict rules and strict this and strict that. The example I would give you, we have a partner, a very big partner. They've only been a partner for a year, but we're starting to see some serious revenue come through them.
Joseph Khalaf:And their solution architects are in despair because every time we send them an SOW from Ampio to the partner, it takes them hours to move it over to their SOW, right? So the SAs are like really struggling. They're like, well, I have other SOWs to work on. So guess what? We invested in building automation so that when we write the SOW with a push of a button, it injects itself into their SOW. So the SAs now, instead of spending an hour or two or three copying and pasting our language into their SOW, they push a button and it goes over there.
Joseph Khalaf:Well, that was an investment on our part. We had a developer work on it for two weeks using the Power Platform. But guess what? Now the partner is gonna go, the essays at the partner are gonna go, hey, we only want ampiO SOWs to come our way because whichever one, right? That's an investment. That's what you do.
Anthony Carrano:That's fantastic. Well, also too is, you know, I know, I mean, ampiO invests also heavily in providing know, monthly partner education, you know, webinars. And so for those that are listening, you just go on, you know, ampiO's LinkedIn page. You'll see they're there. You know, we'll you know, constantly, you know, for those that are either current partners or looking at, you know, you know, as a partnership.
Anthony Carrano:I mean, I know, like, this quarter, doing a lot on, you know, some of the different Azure technologies. I think next quarter, you know, has a big focus on the different security, you know, technologies. So in addition to those webinars, there's, you know, the battle cards, there's the guides, there's a lot of information you guys are providing. It's it's pretty, pretty impressive. Question is because I know as you're making that investment, like, you know, you know, like, you know, the webinars, the guides, etcetera, what was it for you, you know, as an established company to say, you know what?
Anthony Carrano:We need to do more to invest in our in our partners. Because I think it'd be good advice for those that are and the reason why I asked that is for those that are, you know, that, you know, are either looking to partner or build out, you know, their partner channel. It'd be good to hear from, you know, you know, an experienced, you know, business owner like yourself why you made that shift.
Joseph Khalaf:Oh, that that's an easy one. I'll tell you why. Because that's really easy. Because historically, we counted on our skillset and good looks to get business, right? And being reactive gets you nowhere, literally.
Joseph Khalaf:So I'll tell you this, right? So we had a partner in 2022, they brought us 50% of our revenue and they were coming to us like it's nobody's business. We're like, we almost wanted to say to them, please stop, we can't keep up. Then in 2023, they fell off the face of the earth completely, just disappeared. It was like so stressful.
Joseph Khalaf:I'm like, what happened? What did we do wrong? Well, what we did wrong was we didn't invest in the partner. We were just waiting, sitting here, waiting for them to call us, waiting for handouts, right? That is not a recipe for success.
Joseph Khalaf:You have to stay in front of them. You have to, like I said, enable them. You have to be proactive in providing whatever it is you believe you should provide, whether it's, like we said, battle cards, lunch and learns, you have to be proactive. And that was the thing that was kind of like a lightning bulb. It was like, man, we can't just sit here and wait for them.
Joseph Khalaf:What we learned is that the only reason we were making money hand over fist with them is just because it happened to be like a renewal cycle, right? And then the renewal cycle goes away for a couple of years. They weren't gonna come back to us because they were like, well, I don't know what to tell my customers about Microsoft. They're the ones who are telling me. And I'm like, oh yeah, no, that's not gonna work out. We have to be evangelists.
Anthony Carrano:Yeah. Now at this, are you seeing any kind of like emerging trends, things that you're seeing in the world of like, you know, partnerships and channel sales that, you know, either excite and or challenge you?
Joseph Khalaf:You know, I don't know that it's any different. Here's what I'm seeing. I think what I'm seeing in all fairness, which is good for us, I'm happy for it, or I'm happy about it. I'm starting to see companies and partners accept the fact because I think they struggled with that. And what's the word I'm looking for here?
Joseph Khalaf:And kind of wanted to keep it at arm's length for the longest time. They're now accepting the fact that specialization requires partnerships. Nobody can be jack of all trades and be successful. The technologies are becoming extremely complicated. And unless you're Accenture or Avanade, where you have the means to hire these resources that are specialized, unless you're one of these big guys, you have to partner, you have to.
Joseph Khalaf:I get asked the question all the time, which is why internally, I think a lot of team members internally ask me the question, why don't we just do dynamics? We can make money hand over fist. I'm like, because you don't understand how much it costs to become a dynamics partner. Do you understand the cost of the resources and the cost of the training? Why would we do that? Just go to a partner that specializes in it.
Anthony Carrano:I've got, so I've got, two more questions, before I do, Rudy, you wanna jump in with anything?
Rudy Rodriguez:Joe, you reminded me of a thing that goes back many, many years. But, you know, just changing the the conversation, the sales conversation with your own team of what it takes to build a new specialization and build a new practice and how much that costs. Because that reminded me of when I was running my own business there and my team came to, We need to do this. And we used to, you know, my team used to complain about it. So, all right, first question I'm gonna ask you, is it in our business plan?
Rudy Rodriguez:And if it, you know, you had to answer the question correctly before we moved on to the next question. And then it was, if not, why not? Why isn't it in our business plan? Do we have the resources to do this? And what are the consequences of not doing this?
Rudy Rodriguez:And you just reminded me, and it was always a funny situation when people would come in, We need to do this. And then as soon as I'd ask them those four questions, they'd get up and walk out because it's a real challenge. He says, when you're sitting in this seat, you have to understand what it takes because people would bring you supposed opportunities that could cost you a million dollars to undertake. And as a small business, you can't do that. So I think it's very important for people to consider that.
Rudy Rodriguez:So I really appreciate what you've done in the area of partner development because partner development, developing your own partner teams as well as your team understanding what it takes in in adopting a business model that that uses other partners to help you secure business. That's really important for partners to know today.
Joseph Khalaf:Yeah. I always compare it to extending credit. You're extending credit one part of the business is trying to extend credit to another part of a business that doesn't exist. You're building a new business. And I'm like, small businesses can't just extend credit, right?
Joseph Khalaf:A small business can't just allocate $2,300,000 to building a Dynamics practice, right? That's easier said than done. So yeah, I fully agree with what you're saying. Is it in the business plan? Because if it's not in the business plan, that means I put zero financial thought into it.
Rudy Rodriguez:Well, and it's a strategy all business owners have to go through to really understand. And the way technology moves, especially being involved in the Microsoft program for a long time, Microsoft does these shifts, and every time they do these shifts as a Microsoft partner, you have to understand what it's going to take to to undertake it. And a good example today is Copilot. And what do you do with Copilot? Because, just going out and selling licenses does not make your customers more productive.
Rudy Rodriguez:Right?
Joseph Khalaf:For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm. So I've got just a couple, questions, and these these would be pretty, pretty easy. You know, what has been the most rewarding part of working in partnerships for you personally?
Joseph Khalaf:Oh, relationships. Just build relationships with great people. Really, we we I think we are blessed to be in this industry because obviously I know nothing about other industries, but in our technology industry, we're just blessed. It's good people. The relationships have been phenomenal. I'm so glad and grateful for the relationships I have built since I started this company. Before that, remember I told you I just hid behind my monitor at my office at Microsoft. I mean, obviously I had relationships, but with my coworkers, not with anybody else. Today I I amaze myself sometimes at the amount of relationships I've built nationwide and globally, right, being part of this organization. It's been truly rewarding.
Anthony Carrano:Nice, nice. And last one questions. If you know, if someone were just starting out in building like a partner program, like for their business, what advice would you give them?
Joseph Khalaf:Yikes. Don't do what I did at first. That's a great first point.
Anthony Carrano:Well, I know I know we had points like, you know, you've already hit on like, say, you know, obviously be honest, right? So I understand as that's kind of a, you know, obviously a baseline. But anything else?
Joseph Khalaf:I mean, yeah, the partnership thing, you know, to me, a lot of it has to do with likability also. I'd hate to say this because I know it sounds a little shallow, but you have to be likable too, because partners have options. We're not the only rodeo in town. Sure, we'll talk about our differentiation and how we do this. And I have an engineer that does that.
Joseph Khalaf:And they are the strongest and the best and the tallest and they can dunk and blah blah, you know, fine, all that's good, right? But you have to be likable, right? You have to be an honest likable person, first of all. There's another one that I think is very, very critical. And I think that differentiates us. That's why most of our partners never leave us. You have to be easy to work with.
Anthony Carrano:You have to be dynamic. Meaning you can't dig your heels in when it comes to processes, especially when you're working with bigger partners that have had legacy processes forever and a day and say, Nope, we do it that way. And that's the only way we do it. Because the partner will go, Okay, well, I'm gonna have to find a partner that's willing to do it a little bit closer to my way. And you have to be easy to work with.
Joseph Khalaf:And that partners gravitate towards that because they're like oh yeah, I just want easy, man. I want the easy button.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm. Well, it's really and that that doesn't surprise me that you that you share that because, you know, you made one of the points. A lot of those come back to, you know, having the high EQ. Right?
Joseph Khalaf:Yeah.
Anthony Carrano:I mean, most of these guys we know are gonna have, you know, high IQ coupled with being technical, but balance that out with the high EQ makes it a pretty powerful combination. So I appreciate you sharing that. Well, Joe, this has been fun. Really appreciate you coming on. What's kind of like the the best way, you know, for folks listening, how to connect with you?
Joseph Khalaf:I'm on LinkedIn, you go to our website. I mean, we're very public. We're easy to connect with, reach out to me, I'm very accessible. I'll talk to customers and partners and anybody at any time. Again, I love relationships, I love building relationships.
Joseph Khalaf:So yeah, I mean, you could find me on LinkedIn. I know that Rudy accuses me of doctoring up my picture up there, but that's not true. And then, yeah, if you go to www.ampiosolutions.com, you can contact us. If you go to the about us, my bio's up there and you could click on and connect with me from our website. My email is public. I just love to connect with people.
Anthony Carrano:And I'll put all those links. All those links will be in the show notes as well for those that are listening. Well, Joe, thank you once again. You have a great rest of the day.
Joseph Khalaf:I appreciate you all. Have a great day. Bye bye.
Rudy Rodriguez:Take care.
Anthony Carrano:Well, that was a great episode. I really enjoy speaking with Joe. He's, always learned something. I always feel like he has a lot of great insights.
Rudy Rodriguez:Yes. He does. We didn't touch on the one thing that we brought up before the interview, and I I will preclude from including it here. But if you can text me, I'll tell you what I was going to say about Joe since he brings up my age at every single chance he gets.
Anthony Carrano:He does. He does like giving you a hard time. That aside, you know, it's interesting. The thing that, there's several things that really stood out to me, and what I really appreciate, you know, it's funny that, you know, you mentioned that because, you know, obviously, you know, Joe, you know, his company, you know, very technical, doing a lot of high you know, highly very technical work, you know, for partners, but how just the emphasis and the importance on the human side in being personable, just the emphasis on EQ, being honest, likable, being easy to work with, and just the importance of just being dynamic and responsive, you know, as keys to success as as they've been, you know, doing this successfully now for, you know, for over thirteen years. And so it's funny that, you know, that part would you know, he would emphasize that, but that that part would come out, you know, as you're talking.
Rudy Rodriguez:Yeah. And and I've worked with Joe, for quite a while and especially on the IAMCP board in Dallas since, I nominated him to be president of IAMCP Dallas and working with him. And I've had the pleasure of working with him. And the one thing that I that I learned in this interview is not only is he personable and likable, but the amount that he's very knowledgeable about how to work with and through partners and the investment of time into partner development is really important to his organization. And I especially appreciated the story about how he wants to learn more about the partner's business processes and how he can make their jobs a little bit easier.
Rudy Rodriguez:So the story that he shared about the complex SOWs that partners sometimes write and how he invested time and effort for one of his developers to build a process using the technology that they implement to help them, help the SAU process work so much easier for that partner. And in turn, that leads to more business for them. Partner development is really important when you're working with and through partners.
Anthony Carrano:Mhmm. And akin to that too just with, like, some of the trends that they're seeing just how, you know, that companies are accepting the fact that, you know, the partner is a partner that they need specialization. And one of the key ways in which they can kinda fill those gaps, you know, to, you know, to have those technical specializations is through partnerships. And that truly, you know, together, you know, you know, you're gonna win. Right?
Anthony Carrano:And, it's better together. You know, this is just yet another example of that. So I thought it was really great.
Rudy Rodriguez:Absolutely. It was a great episode. So to all of those who are listening today, thank you for joining us on this episode of IAMCP Profiles in Partnership powered by Dunamis Marketing. We hope you enjoyed this podcast and find it useful and inspiring. If you did, please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Rudy Rodriguez:One of the best ways to partner for success is to join IAMCP, a community of Microsoft partners who help each other grow and thrive. IAMCP members can find and connect with other partners locally and globally and access exclusive resources and opportunities. Whether you're looking for new customers, new markets, or new solutions, IAMCP can help you achieve your goals. To learn more, visit the website at www.iamcp.org.
